One Tech Tip: How to get started with AI agents, and which are best for specific tasks

Agentic artificial intelligence is gaining popularity far beyond tech circles, with Meta , OpenAI , Anthropic and other companies going head-to-head in the surging market for consumer-friendly AI agents.

While the leading AI labs have offered tools with agentic capabilities for years, agents that are designed to work proactively on a user’s behalf for tasks from buying groceries to managing to-do lists have taken off this year.

For anyone getting started, it can be overwhelming to understand the differences between the companies' various offerings and which agents might be best suited for specific tasks.

Here are some pointers on where to begin if you're looking to leverage agents in your personal or professional life — or both.

Many people in the tech world turn to multiple agents from different AI labs for both their work and home lives. Why? Because “there’s not one holy grail-like agent right now that could do everything,” said Jose Artigas, a business consultant working on AI strategy.

Artigas and many others who use AI agents regularly rely on a “stack” of them, a term that refers to a combination of many tools and technologies.

Each company's consumer-facing agent has a slightly different target function, and they vary in accessibility. Some are free, some require a monthly subscription and others are still in testing modes or otherwise not available to everyone. There are also restrictions on their availability in countries outside of the U.S.

Experts say it's best not to rely solely on one agent if you're looking to maximize their output and productivity.

“What I like to do is to have this system of checks and balances in place where one agent does the work and then I let the other one critique and criticize it, and that way, they find mistakes, correct themselves and become better,” said Clara Gigling, founder of Oudae Labs, a research lab building bespoke tools for agents.

Each of the major AI companies markets their consumer-facing agents in slightly different ways, often focusing on its ability to help manage either a busy work life or a busy personal life.

Anthropic said it built Claude Duet for “professionals and small business owners with more on their plates than they can track.” In contrast, Meta said Muse can help with tasks from “saving money and improving your health to smart shopping and helping you strengthen your relationships.”

Claude Duet, OpenAI's Dots and xAI's Grok Bot have each been described as aiming to be like a colleague, or even a chief of staff, whereas Muse and Instinct, from the startup Spear Street Technology, have been described as more like personal assistants. But that's not to say any of them are incapable of helping with tasks outside those realms.

Artigas said he'd recommend looking at Claude Duet as key for someone working on a side hustle or launching a new business, Dots as a debugger and problem solver if they're engaging in any specialized technical work, and Instinct for help with things like sending tedious emails or booking reservations and travel plans.

Those are the three consumer-facing agents he uses most often, but Artigas said Muse would be a good place to start for a novice because it's “very user-friendly,” with many prompts early on to give people ideas of how they can use it.

Your preferences for how you want to interact with an agent, how your agent communicates, and your own assessment of the quality of its work should all factor into which agents you'd like to use — and which tasks you'd like to assign to an agent.

Experts recommend testing out agents you're curious about to help in reaching those determinations.

To begin this testing, Gigling said it can be helpful to think about tasks you consistently do and then choose some to delegate to agents. It is important to be specific — giving the agent a detailed goal and the required context and tools to achieve it, she said.

“Start with one annoying, repeated thing that you keep putting off,” Artigas said, with the caveat that it has to be an online task. An agent can't handle the pile of laundry you've been meaning to fold or the junk drawer that needs organizing. A long email you don't want to write or a flight you've been slow to book are good jumping off points.

“You just have to experience the different agents and see what works best” for you, Artigas said.

For an agent to most effectively handle routine tasks or act like a proactive assistant, it needs to have access to a slew of information about you.

Your inbox, your calendar, your personal identification information and even your credit card number and bank account are all par for the course if you want an agent to sort through your deluge of emails, book your flight or do some holiday shopping .

This has raised significant privacy concerns for some.

“Curiosity is always a great starting point, just trying and playing around with it,” Gigling said, but it's also important to “be mindful” when sharing private information.

Many companies offering consumer-facing personal agents have worked to address those concerns, with privacy policies that outline how agents operate on their own dedicated cloud computers and how users can control their memory retention.

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