Can someone who knows more about AI agents explain this to me?

Axios quotes an Anthropic spokesperson re: the Claude leaks, who says that this new capability is coming: "A “persistent assistant” running in background mode that lets Claude Code keep working even when a user is idle. "

Isn’t that what they claim “agents” are doing already? Or am I missing something? I would hate to learn that “agents” are just a marketing term and they don’t actually do the thing these companies claim… ;)

  • mulcahey@lemmy.worldOP
    2·
    1 month ago

    What they’re talking about here is something very different, something which can continue processing inputs all of the time. It would be ‘aware’ of (depending on what you give it access to) emails coming in, what you’re working on in other programs, calendar events, etc. The idea is that it could potentially interrupt you with suggestions, maybe even anticipate what you will want and do it for you.

    I really thought that was the pitch for these already-existing agents.

    Isn’t that exactly what’s described in this story from 2 months ago, where an AI agent executes a series of tasks that end up in this Meta exec getting her email deleted? That sounds way more complicated than “draft a letter to my congressman.” She even writes “I had to RUN to my Mac mini like I was defusing a bomb” implying that she was away from her desk. So what’s the difference between this already-existing tech and the new “persistent assistant” that can work when the user is idle?

    • postscarce@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      2·
      1 month ago

      The AI in the article you linked was Open Claw, which is an open-source version of one of these persistent AIs, so you’re right. It links to LLMs like Claude, but Anthropic haven’t actually released their own version yet, which is why it was showing up in the original files as ‘built but not yet shipped’.