What's the significance of AI agents?
Last week, my article revolved around the Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents, being digital assistants and/or helpers that go beyond just responding to user inputs and prompts where they actually act proactively and not reactively to user/your requests. This week, I want to elaborate on what significance do these AI agents have on us? Truth be told, as a senior professional, one can be overwhelmed and loaded too, not just with information as an overload (from news outlets, social media, work, family, etc) yet with personal and professional actions and commitment too (from checking various emails, meetings, projects, and a huge to-do-list that continues to grow periodically)
I know some might say that there are productivity tools and apps that might help and be a solution to help manage time and tasks, yet the proof is in the pudding on the number of hours that may be needed which is not enough to be honest and practical. A probable solution is therefore my last article on utilizing AI agents, for they would (as soon as they mature) assist you 24/7 (365 days) on virtually all your tasks, even while you're asleep or is on vacation.
What's the significance of these AI agents though? In a nutshell, having someone smart and knowledgeable available next to you, round the clock, to assist you. What more? Quicker, cheaper (in price and not in quality), multitasker, and are very responsive. This may not be practical to have as a human being, let aside the bomb (in terms of cost) you would need to pay if such a service is available, for you may require more-than one person or resource to get such activities done (just incase an organization tries to mimic such a need today).
Humans have emotions, humans need time to rest and humans cannot normally handle more-than one task at a time with superior quality. Yet smart machines and robots can (only with limitations as it stands today) AI agents save lots of time.
Think of all the repetitive tasks it can do for you every day, from replying to emails, reviewing and summarizing your readings/reports, organizing your digital calendar and many more. All these time-consuming tasks can be freed up for you to focus on other activities that only you can do best (or don't necessarily need assistance with). AI agents learn and can adapt quite fast, thanks to the large language models (LLMs) which I will try and write about in the coming articles. But briefly, LLMs get smart every day by learning from a context, applying some logic and/or sometimes also get creative.
As a pratical example, see how generative AI apps like ChatGPT and Gemini works (they all depend on LLMs). Lastly, AI agents biggest significance, as I had mentioned earlier, is that they work while you are asleep. They don't take break, don't ask for leave, and certainly are not moody (as they don't have emotions as humans do). This is a big bonus of working with AI agents.
To conclude, AI agents would be able to think, plan and act on your behalf. What you just need to do is to give them a goal (such as 'Find me a restaurant here in Muscat that serves Mandi Rice, and is at a place near the beach, and book for me at 12 p.m. next Saturday the 14th June').
The AI agent will find out the steps, look for the information, and get you the results so as perform the necessary booking for you. AI agents will surely redefine what's possible by making life management much easier and faster; something I personally need to keep abreast. Until we catch up again next week, stay positive and tuned.
Tariq al Barwani
The writer is the founder of Knowledge Oman.
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3 hours ago
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What's the significance of AI agents?
Last week, my article revolved around the Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents, being digital assistants and/or helpers that go beyond just responding to user inputs and prompts where they actually act proactively and not reactively to user/your requests. This week, I want to elaborate on what significance do these AI agents have on us? Truth be told, as a senior professional, one can be overwhelmed and loaded too, not just with information as an overload (from news outlets, social media, work, family, etc) yet with personal and professional actions and commitment too (from checking various emails, meetings, projects, and a huge to-do-list that continues to grow periodically) I know some might say that there are productivity tools and apps that might help and be a solution to help manage time and tasks, yet the proof is in the pudding on the number of hours that may be needed which is not enough to be honest and practical. A probable solution is therefore my last article on utilizing AI agents, for they would (as soon as they mature) assist you 24/7 (365 days) on virtually all your tasks, even while you're asleep or is on vacation. What's the significance of these AI agents though? In a nutshell, having someone smart and knowledgeable available next to you, round the clock, to assist you. What more? Quicker, cheaper (in price and not in quality), multitasker, and are very responsive. This may not be practical to have as a human being, let aside the bomb (in terms of cost) you would need to pay if such a service is available, for you may require more-than one person or resource to get such activities done (just incase an organization tries to mimic such a need today). Humans have emotions, humans need time to rest and humans cannot normally handle more-than one task at a time with superior quality. Yet smart machines and robots can (only with limitations as it stands today) AI agents save lots of time. Think of all the repetitive tasks it can do for you every day, from replying to emails, reviewing and summarizing your readings/reports, organizing your digital calendar and many more. All these time-consuming tasks can be freed up for you to focus on other activities that only you can do best (or don't necessarily need assistance with). AI agents learn and can adapt quite fast, thanks to the large language models (LLMs) which I will try and write about in the coming articles. But briefly, LLMs get smart every day by learning from a context, applying some logic and/or sometimes also get creative. As a pratical example, see how generative AI apps like ChatGPT and Gemini works (they all depend on LLMs). Lastly, AI agents biggest significance, as I had mentioned earlier, is that they work while you are asleep. They don't take break, don't ask for leave, and certainly are not moody (as they don't have emotions as humans do). This is a big bonus of working with AI agents. To conclude, AI agents would be able to think, plan and act on your behalf. What you just need to do is to give them a goal (such as 'Find me a restaurant here in Muscat that serves Mandi Rice, and is at a place near the beach, and book for me at 12 p.m. next Saturday the 14th June'). The AI agent will find out the steps, look for the information, and get you the results so as perform the necessary booking for you. AI agents will surely redefine what's possible by making life management much easier and faster; something I personally need to keep abreast. Until we catch up again next week, stay positive and tuned. Tariq al Barwani The writer is the founder of Knowledge Oman.
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6 days ago
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AI agents will soon assist you in real life
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Google's new AI-powered search has arrived
Last week, I asked Google to help me plan my daughter's birthday party by finding a park in Oakland, California, with picnic tables. The site generated a list of parks nearby, so I went to scout two of them out — only to find there were, in fact, no tables. 'I was just there,' I typed to Google. 'I didn't see wooden tables.' Google acknowledged the mistake and produced another list, which again included one of the parks with no tables. I repeated this experiment by asking Google to find an affordable car wash nearby. Google listed a service for $25, but when I arrived, a car wash cost $65. I also asked Google to find a grocery store where I could buy an exotic pepper paste. Its list included a nearby Whole Foods, which didn't carry the item. I wasn't doing traditional web searches on I was testing the company's new AI Mode, a tool that is similar to chatbots like ChatGPT and Google's Gemini, where users can type in questions to get answers. AI Mode, which is rolling out worldwide in the coming weeks, will soon appear as a tab next to your search results. The arrival of AI Mode underscores how new technology is redefining what it means to search for something online. For decades, a web search involved looking up keywords, like 'most reliable car brands,' to show a list of relevant websites. Now, with generative AI, the technology that powers chatbots by using complex language models to guess what words belong together, you can ask more specific questions or make complicated requests. That could include directing it to create a chart comparing the five most reliable 2025 sedans. Google, which has already been showing AI-generated summaries on its search pages for the past year, said AI Mode was a new frontier for search that would complement — but not yet replace — its traditional counterpart. 'We're really trying for AI Mode to be best at a new class of questions that are harder, more specific, and the best for when you're going back and forth trying to get something done,' Robby Stein, a Google executive who oversees the search product team, said in an interview. The prominent placement of AI Mode on shows that AI is rapidly becoming unavoidable. Meta has added a chatbot, Meta AI, in Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram, and Microsoft has integrated AI into its Bing search engine and its latest Surface computers. What's unique about AI Mode is that the technology stitches together data from Google's vast empire of internet services to provide an answer to a query. When you type a question, it could pull data from search queries on location information on Google Maps, and Google's shopping data on consumer products. To help assess whether AI is the future of search, I tested the new tool against traditional Google searches for a multitude of personal tasks over the past week, including shopping for a toddler car seat, preparing for a Memorial Day barbecue, and understanding the plot twists of a popular video game. The results were mixed, with lots of hits but also lots of misses, so I encourage people to use AI Mode with caution. Here's how it went. AI Mode vs. Google Search For each of my experiments, I opened AI Mode in one browser tab and with its traditional search bar in another. I typed the same query in each tab, then compared AI Mode's answers with Google's top list of search results. That helped determine whether AI Mode was more effective or if I was better off clicking on search results to find the answers. Searching for Things and Places My earlier examples of picnic tables, a grocery item, and a cheap carwash were similar in that they involved asking Google to find places or objects in the real world. Each of those queries prompted Google's AI to pull my location information and scan sources found on the web. — Google's AI Mode list included two parks with no picnic tables, but when I used to do the same search, its top three results included parks nearby that had tables. — Google's AI Mode suggested that the carwash I visited was $25 based on one user review that mentioned this price. But a Google search showed several Yelp reviews of the business, where people reported a more accurate range of $50 to $70. — Google's AI Mode generated a list of grocery stores, including Whole Foods, that potentially sold the aji amarillo paste that I needed to make Peruvian chicken for a Memorial Day barbecue. When I did a normal Google search for the paste nearby, the search engine took me to an Instacart listing confirming that one of the stores listed by AI Mode, Berkeley Bowl, carried the paste. Winner: Google search by a long shot. AI Mode's suggestions were sometimes accurate, but failing to check its answers could lead you down the wrong path and waste your time. Google said users of AI Mode could share feedback so it could quickly learn. 'It's early days, and these are technologies that are just starting to roll out now,' Stein said. 'As we learn about how to improve it, we'll improve it as quickly as possible.' Product Research In another test, I asked Google's AI to help me research toddler car seats. This is where I saw the technology's potential to become very useful. Unlike a traditional web search, which would require me to read reviews of various car seat models and jot down a list including their pricing and features, AI Mode did all of this for me. I typed: 'I'm shopping for a convertible car seat. Create a table for me including popular models from Graco, Chicco, and others, and include pricing and main features.' Google immediately generated a handy chart to make comparing five car seats easy. There were some hiccups: Some information was missing from the table, and I noticed that the pricing was wrong for two of the seats. Still, it was simple for me to ask the AI to make corrections, and overall, picking a car seat with this bespoke chart sped up the process for me compared with the old-school method. I tested AI Mode to research other products like birthday gifts for a 1-year-old and the best electric toothbrush. The suggestions were useful. Winner: AI Mode. It's a nifty shopping tool, though it's still wise to do a Google search to double-check the prices. Pop Culture After becoming a sleep-deprived father with the attention span of a goldfish, I got in the habit of reading summaries of movies and TV shows with convoluted plots. Recently, I finished a popular video game, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which had a complex storyline. So I asked Google to summarize what had happened. Google gathered information from various video game blogs, Reddit posts, and YouTube videos to piece together a cohesive summary of the game's plot and many twists. It was a satisfying recap. I tested AI Mode on other pieces of pop culture, like the Apple TV show 'Severance' and HBO's 'The Last of Us,' including how the latter show was different from the video game on which it's based. The tool generated similarly useful summaries. Winner: AI Mode. A traditional Google search will show you plenty of plot summaries of TV shows, games, and movies on various sites. But sometimes you just want a quick and dirty bullet-pointed recap. Bottom Line A traditional Google search is still best for the simple act of looking for things to do nearby, but AI Mode could prove to be a nifty tool for more tedious tasks like product research for online shopping — an instant chart comparing baby car seats is helpful, even if imperfect. Just always check the answers. As for whether this is the future of search, consumers will probably decide that over time. If most of you prefer to use AI Mode, it will probably gradually replace Google as we know it. I still prefer an old-school search, but my feelings could change one chart of baby gear at a time. This article originally appeared in
