Opinion The “agentic era,” as Nvidia’s Jim Fan and others have referred to the current evolutionary state of generative artificial intelligence (AI), is going to be a huge disappointment.
The simple reason is that most people do not need AI agents to book their trips, order groceries online, or book restaurant reservations.
Those who do need AI agents – friendless titans of industry, exposure-starved celebrities, and the like – already have a better option, a human personal assistant, several of them, even entire companies committed to carrying out commands.
The tech-besotted imagine that everyone wants their own Jarvis, the AI agent that serves billionaire Tony Stark in the Marvel cinematic universe, even though Jarvis would be wasted making occasional DoorDash orders for those with relatively uncomplicated lives.
But beyond the delusions of self-importance that lead people to believe they deserve a software servant, there are a number of obstacles that will hinder the deployment of AI agents and limit their practicality.
OpenAI’s Operator, like Anthropic’s computer use API before it, combines generative AI interaction – the now familiar prompt and response ritual – with multimodal models (capable of visual, audio, and text interaction), chain-of-thought reasoning, browser automation, and access to third-party APIs.
That’s quite a technical confection, but what it enables – web automation – isn’t new. Everything that Operator enables was possible before using other means, both programmatic and manual.
The demonstration video shows a few such tasks as prompts to Operator, each of which is tied to a specific online service provider – “I need a cheap rental car for LA,” linked to Priceline; “Find me a spot to take my 22′ campervan for a solo trip this weekend that has electric hookups,” linked to Hipcamp; and “I’m looking for a boutique hotel in Paris with a view of the Eiffel Tower,” linked to Booking.com.
Has OpenAI not heard of Google Search? Of course they have, and that’s what this is really about – opening up a new distribution channel for online services in which OpenAI is the gatekeeper, toll taker, and data aggregator instead of Google.
OpenAI is the gatekeeper, toll taker, and data aggregator instead of Google
It’s understandable why OpenAI might wish to become the central intermediary between customers and businesses, but it’s less clear why businesses might want to become endpoints in OpenAI’s ecosystem and surrender direct contact with customers.
Perhaps companies are keen to participate to exclude rivals – if Uber is getting rides booked by Operator, Lyft is not.
But if Lyft does eventually become a partner in this ecosystem, will Operator make decisions about which brand will be aw
