What Happens When Your Coworkers Are AI Agents

In this episode of, we talk to writer Evan Ratliff about how he created a small startup made entirely of AI employees--and what his findings reveal about the reality of an agentic future. This year, AI agents have been at the forefront of tech companies' ambitions. OpenAI's Sam Altman has often talked about a possible billion-dollar company being spun up with just one human and an army of AI agents. And so last summer, journalist Evan Ratliff decided to try to become that unicorn himself--by creating HarumoAI, a small startup that's made up of AI employees and executives. Hosts Michael Calore and Lauren Goode sit down with Evan to discuss how it's going, and the current promises and realities of AI agents. Write to us at uncannyvalley@wired.com . You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link . Hey, Lauren, how are you doing? It was so fantastic that I had a hard time coming back, honestly. And I saw a lot of really beautiful art. Not a bad place to go for vacation, I have to say. I've heard this before, I confirmed it. And after seeing so much incredible art and just people doing stuff with their hands and tangible goods, I was like, I don't want to go back to the world of AI. I didn't want to go back to sitting in a coffee shop and hearing everyone pitching their AI startups and driving on the 101 and seeing the billboards. I was just like, What? No, keep me in the land of Burrata and Caravaggio. Well, Lauren, I'm sorry to tell you that you came back on the show just in time to talk about AI agents. It's something that we've talked about a lot this year and our listeners have heard about it a lot, and we're not sick of talking about it.