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... ;)
Currently the AI only runs for a short time after you provide a prompt. So say you ask it to ‘draft a letter to my congressman demanding an end to the war’, the AI will read what you wrote and output its interpretation of what you want, then it will stop.
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.
Obviously this is going to be risky at first. We’ve already seen stories of AIs deleting entire projects, what could they get up to if they’re allowed to be your online stand-in with access to everything on your device?
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