Chatbots Are Entering the Stone Age

For all the bluster about generative artificial intelligence upending the world, the technology has yet to meaningfully transform white-collar work. Workers are dabbling with chatbots for tasks such as drafting emails, and companies are launching countless experiments, but office work hasn't undergone a major AI reboot. Perhaps that's only because we haven't given chatbots like Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT the right tools for the job yet; they're generally restricted to taking in and spitting out text via a chat interface. Things might get more interesting in business settings as AI companies start deploying so-called "AI agents," which can take action by operating other software on a computer or via the internet. Anthropic, a competitor to OpenAI, announced a major new product today that attempts to prove the thesis that tool use is needed for AI's next leap in usefulness.