I recently needed to contact the CEO of a startup called Lindy, a company developing personal assistants powered by artificial intelligence. Instead of looking for it myself, I turned to an AI helper of my own, an open source program called Auto-GPT, typing in "Find me the email address of the CEO of Lindy AI." Like a delightfully enthusiastic intern, Auto-GPT began furiously Googling and browsing the web for answers, providing a running commentary designed to explain its actions as it went. "A web search is a good starting point to gather information about the CEO and their email address," it told me. When given a task like finding a startup CEO's email address, the open source Auto-GPT suggests a plan for approval and can attempt to put it into action. "I found several sources mentioning Flo Crivello as the CEO of Lindy.ai, but I haven't found their email address yet," Auto-GPT reported.

A couple of weeks ago, startup CEO Flo Crivello typed a message asking his personal assistant Lindy to change the length of an upcoming meeting from 30 to 45 minutes. Lindy, a software agent that happens to be powered by artificial intelligence, found a dozen or so 30-minute meetings on Crivello's calendar and promptly extended them all. "I was like'God dammit, she kind of destroyed my calendar,'" Crivello says of the AI agent, which is being developed by his startup, also called Lindy. Crivello's company is one of several startups hoping to parlay recent strides in chatbots that produce impressive text into assistants or agents capable of performing useful tasks. Within a year or two, the hope is that these AI agents will routinely help people accomplish everyday chores.