The New AI Agents That Shop, Plan, and Gossip
a16z's Josh Elman and David Pawlan, who has reviewed 147 AI assistants, discuss how personal agents shop, plan trips and socialize, and why trust, discretion and fun may matter more than pure productivity.
The gist
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Pawlan says trust is the top fear among AI power users, raised in 22% of roughly 3,600 group chat messages he tracked.
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Pawlan found all but one of the top 15 agents would export a memory file of what they know about you, making switching easy.
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Elman uses Wabby to split his life into threads, including a watch list of shows and books that updates as he adds items.
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Elman bought the new Apple Watch for upcoming features like Siri recap and live rewind, while Pawlan's technophobe mom now happily texts Instinct.
"Instinct really did a phenomenal job... they Instinct really did continuously bring back the best price... I gave my mom Instinct and I'm just watching her now play around with it. She's having so much fun. She's technophobe, hates technology, and is just having a blast."
▶ Play at 13:1619 creators recommend it, including Harry Stebbings, Kevin Rose, and Shaan Puri.
See all on the Instinct page"One of the things I really like about Wabby... it goes through my email and other things and actually gives me a whole bunch of different threads of life... I have one thread with Wabby that I built, a little watch list of all the shows that I want to watch and books I want to..."
▶ Play at 29:29"I bought the new Apple Watch because they have talked about some features like Siri recap and live rewind that are coming out. I don't think they're quite out yet, but I upgraded my watch in expectation for those."
▶ Play at 45:5511 creators recommend it, including Marques Brownlee, David Sinclair, and Emmanuel Ameisen.
See all on the Apple Watch pageWhat they recommend · 3 picks
"Instinct really did a phenomenal job... they Instinct really did continuously bring back the best price... I gave my mom Instinct and I'm just watching her now play around with ..."
"One of the things I really like about Wabby... it goes through my email and other things and actually gives me a whole bunch of different threads of life... I have one thread wi..."
"I bought the new Apple Watch because they have talked about some features like Siri recap and live rewind that are coming out. I don't think they're quite out yet, but I upgrade..."
Josh Elman
2 picks · guest
"One of the things I really like about Wabby... it goes through my email and other things and actually gives me a whole bunch of different threads of life... I have one thread wi..."
"I bought the new Apple Watch because they have talked about some features like Siri recap and live rewind that are coming out. I don't think they're quite out yet, but I upgrade..."
David Pawlan
1 pick · guest
"Instinct really did a phenomenal job... they Instinct really did continuously bring back the best price... I gave my mom Instinct and I'm just watching her now play around with ..."
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