AI Agents Work Background

Shaan Puri believes we're entering an era where AI agents will work proactively in the background, automatically handling tasks without needing constant prompting. He's experimenting with tools that demonstrate this shift from reactive to proactive AI assistance.

Key Points:

• Moving Beyond Basic Chatbots:

  • ChatGPT is "old news" - even his mom knows about it
  • The real opportunity is in AI agents that work autonomously
  • Most people talk about agents but aren't actually using them for anything useful

• DoAnything.com Example:

  • Built by Garrett (founder of Pipedream) as a "to-do list that does itself"
  • He gave it a simple prompt: analyze his YouTube channel (My First Million) like a world-class content strategist
  • The tool autonomously:
    • Found the channel without being given a link
    • Analyzed 869K subscribers and 300M views
    • Identified the real problem: only 3-5% of subscribers click on new uploads
    • Created a one-month content plan with specific video titles
    • Offered to script videos and design thumbnails
  • All of this happened in 19 minutes before recording

• ChatGPT's Pulse Feature:

  • Proactively searches for relevant information daily
  • Knows what you're working on and serves updates without prompting
  • Represents the shift toward AI that anticipates needs

• Nebula by Furqan:

  • Connects to Slack, Gmail, and Google Calendar
  • Automatically creates prep docs for upcoming meetings
  • Reads code changes on GitHub and summarizes them without being asked
  • The premise: "You don't need to ask me what to do - I should figure it out based on what's going on"

• NotebookLM by Google:

  • Google has powerful tools but "sucks at marketing them"
  • Can turn any podcast into a slide deck presentation
  • Example: Dropped in a 1.5-hour Dwarkesh podcast with Andrej Karpathy
  • Auto-generated a complete presentation called "Summoning Ghosts: The Decade of AI Agents"
  • Much better than listening to an hour-long talk - gives you the gist immediately

• The Vision:

  • Background workers constantly working for you
  • AI that reads your communications and proactively does work
  • 10x improvement in job performance through autonomous AI assistance
  • "Staying on top of all this stuff is really hard" - but these tools make it manageable