The Download: Google's new AI agent, and our tech pessimism bias

What's happening: Google is set to launch a new system called Astra later this year. It promises that it will be the most powerful, advanced type of AI assistant it's ever launched. The current generation of AI assistants, such as ChatGPT, can retrieve information and offer answers, but that is about it. But this year, Google is rebranding its assistants as more advanced "agents," which it says could show reasoning, planning, and memory skills and are able to take multiple steps to execute tasks. The big picture: Tech companies are in the middle of a fierce competition over AI supremacy, and AI agents are the latest effort from Big Tech firms to show they are pushing the frontier of development.