The New AI Agents That Shop, Plan, and Gossip

David Pawlan, creator of Assistant Benchmark, joins Anish Acharya and Josh Elman to take stock of an agent landscape that changes almost weekly. Drawing on tests of more than 140 assistants and a survey of AI power users, they explore why trust is the dominant fear, how fences and permissions might make agents safe, and where privacy, embarrassment, and judgment fit in. The conversation then moves to multiplayer and gossipy agents, agent-to-agent networks that could spark serendipity, and the possibility that the most valuable agents will do more than save time, becoming a kind of secret superpower.