Since its debut last month, Meta’s Muse, the artificially intelligent assistant that performs tasks on a user’s behalf, has been the most downloaded phone app. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has responded with a competitor called dots, a similar assistant that costs $100 a month to use.
Welcome to the era of agents, digital assistants that use our devices for us. Though they share many similarities with chatbots, agents like Muse and dots serve a different purpose. Chatbots primarily provide answers to questions. Agents are essentially bots with their own computer and web browser, so they can do more complicated things like applying for jobs, booking restaurant tables and sending emails.
This concept may sound familiar. More than a decade ago, tech companies like Amazon, Apple and Google tried offering virtual assistants that could be asked to do things like hailing an Uber and ordering takeout. But this idea never resonated with consumers: The technology was so slow and clunky that people found it easier to handle the tasks themselves.
Modern A.I. agents like Muse and dots are much more flexible and efficient — so much so that eventually, it could become the norm to outsource certain kinds of rote, repetitious tasks to agents. Anthropic, the maker of the Claude chatbot, announced on Wednesday that it was testing a similar agent called Duet.
(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied the suit’s claims.)
To illustrate this, I tested OpenAI’s dots alongside Muse for the past two weeks to come up with a list of killer tasks. I was pleasantly surprised that I managed to book a reservation at one of the most untouchable restaurants in the country. I also asked the agents to apply for jobs for my former nanny and plan school lunches for my toddler.
Here’s how it went.
Getting Set Up
OpenAI’s dots is a feature that is part of ChatGPT. To activate it, you must sign up for a subscription, labeled ChatGPT Pro 100, pay $100 and then click a button to set up your dots agent. From there, you can name your agent — I named mine after my golden retriever Homer — and connect different apps to it, such as Gmail.
To set up Muse, you download the free Muse app from the Google or Apple app store and then create a free account. I named my agent Momo, after my late Labrador.
A word of caution when using agents: grant access only to those apps and data you feel comfortable sharing with a tech giant. That’s because your personal information could be reviewed by the tech companies and used to improve their products. To that end, I connected a Gmail account I use only for shopping.
What’s most remarkable about A.I. agents is that they can do work for you around the clock. To acclimate to Muse and dots, try these five tasks that automate work that would normally be tedious to do on your own.
1. Schedule a Restaurant Booking
Booking a restaurant table is normally easy, but it can be more challenging at high-demand restaurants. Sun Moon Studio, a fine-dining restaurant in Oakland, Calif., with a Michelin star, is one example. It has only 12 seats, and if you are trying for a weekend at noon, it shows available tables several weeks in advance. Whenever I tried to book a table there, every slot was immediately taken by someone else.
So why not ask a bot to sit at a computer and wait for the tables to open up?
I explained to Muse and dots that getting a table at Sun Moon Studio was highly competitive and that they could book whatever a table became available. Both tried and failed repeatedly. Then last week, dots messaged me with good news: It had successfully reached the confirmation screen for booking a table in late November.
Fine dining isn’t for everyone, but you can use this example for other coveted items that go on sale at specific times, like concerts and sports tickets, sneakers, game consoles and smartphones. A bot may just give you an edge.
2. Get a Workout Plan Upon Arriving at the Gym
Whenever I visit my local rock climbing gym, I spend a few minutes planning my workout before I begin. It’s a repetitive ritual that helps me track my progress and strive toward goals.
This month, I tried asking the agents to automate this task. I wrote: “Whenever I arrive at my climbing gym, send me a workout plan based on my goals for the day.”
Dots declined to do this because it does not have the ability to trigger actions based on my real-time location, but Muse was up for it. As soon as I stepped into the climbing gym, it messaged me with my workout plan for the day.
Use your imagination to tailor this example to your situation, like getting a shopping list for your favorite grocery items as soon as you arrive at Costco, or getting a checklist of to-dos when you arrive at the office.
3. Apply for Jobs Faster
Recently, I was reminded of the grueling process of job searching when I helped my former nanny, who is uncomfortable with technology, search for a new family to work with. I responded to dozens of online ads seeking nannies with the same copy-and-paste text recommending my nanny, altering a few words to respond directly to each job posting.
I was relieved when Muse and dots arrived to speed up this mind-numbing process. I instructed each agent to browse for new job posts each day on a website connecting parents with caregivers, and to automatically respond to every relevant posting to recommend my nanny using the text I had written for her.
Dots choked on this task because it kept running into glitches in its web browser. But the other day, while I was loading groceries in my car, Muse responded to eight job posts. Within an hour, I got two responses from parents eager to meet my nanny.
4. Daily Meal Planning
As a parent, meal planning throughout the week for a toddler’s lunch, along with dinner for the family, takes up significant mental bandwidth. Chatbots were mildly helpful with generating lists of meals for the week, but Muse and dots are better suited for the daily minutiae of meal planning because they can message you each morning with a plan.
I told the agents what my daughter likes to eat at school and what I like to cook for dinner. I also mentioned the items currently in the fridge and asked them to message me every day at 7 a.m. with meal suggestions for my daughter’s lunch and dinner for the family.
The other day, Muse suggested grilled cheese and strawberries for my daughter’s lunch and beef stew for dinner. Dots suggested butter noodles with shredded chicken for my daughter’s lunch and coincidentally suggested the same dinner. I heeded their recommendations.
5. Haggle Down Products
I needed new tires for my car, but instead of reading reviews of high-quality tires and trying to find the best price, I asked Muse and dots to do the research and then contact a nearby tire store to match the lowest price online. Both agents found a deal on a set of top-rated Michelin tires that was $80 less than the tire shop’s price. Then they filled out a form on the tire shop’s website to ask for a price match.
By the time I came home from walking my dogs, I was delighted to see two emails from the tire store confirming it would match the lowest price.
Bottom Line
For now, using Muse is a no-brainer considering the $100 monthly cost of dots and Muse’s superior capabilities.
Alexander Embiricos, the head of enterprise product for OpenAI, said in an interview that the company had initially designed dots for handling much harder tasks, like helping a freelancer run a business, than the everyday chores I tested it with. He added that the company expected dots to eventually be free after testing the technology with paid users.
Even before that, it feels like we have reached a turning point with A.I. With each of the above experiments, I found myself wondering, “Why would I ever do this the old way again?”
The post Put Your A.I. Agents to Work With These 5 Killer Tasks appeared first on New York Times.
