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.

Microsoft's Agent 365 Wants to Help You Manage Your AI Bot Army Microsoft still sees AI agents as the future of work, and the enterprise software giant wants companies to be able to manage those agents just like human employees. A new tool from Microsoft called Agent 365 is designed to help businesses control their growing collection of robotic helpers. Agent 365 is not a platform for making enterprise AI tools; it's a way to manage them, as if they were human employees . Companies using generative AI agents in their digital workplace can use Agent 365 to organize their growing sprawl of bots, keep tabs on how they're performing, and tweak their settings. The tool is rolling out today in Microsoft's early access program.

Our socioeconomic system is facing an existential threat from AI. In our capitalist society, most people depend on jobs to sustain themselves. The U.S. government, in turn, relies heavily on taxing the income of individual workers for revenue. As artificial intelligence progressively eliminates job opportunities, a growing number of individuals will face severe job insecurity, leading to a corresponding decline in federal revenue. Radical action is needed now to steer away from a dystopian collapse toward better possibilities.

Center for AI Safety Director Dan Hendrycks explains concerns about how the rapid growth of artificial intelligence could impact society. People who work closely alongside artificial intelligence are more likely to experience loneliness, binge drinking and insomnia than colleagues who work alongside humans, according to a new study. The release of ChatGPT last year opened the floodgates to artificial intelligence, as people across the globe rushed to use the chatbot, which can mimic human conversations, while some industries readied to incorporate the technology into day-to-day tasks. A Goldman Sachs study in March found generative AI could replace and affect 300 million jobs around the world. Another study from Challenger, Gray & Christmas found AI chatbot ChatGPT could replace at least 4.8 million American jobs.

By 2050, AI would have replaced quite a number of Jobs, like couriers, workers, content writers, etc. Because of this, a majority of the human population in these (and related) fields will shift focus from working in these roles to building, managing, and collaborating with AI systems. With the consistent improvement of older technologies and the emergence of new ones, AI programs are getting better than ever. For example, ChatGPT, an AI chatbot, can generate real and natural human-like texts and can answer almost every question you have. Stable Diffusion is a text-to-image AI program that can create a life-like image from the information provided, by way of prompts. Almost all the tech giants like Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Adobe are working on their own AI programs.

The role of robotics and automation in the 4th industrial revolution continues to develop new kinds of machines that are more useful and functional in the future. The fourth industrial revolution is anticipated to have far-reaching consequences for businesses and individuals worldwide. If you own a company of any scale, it's worth reviewing your existing operations to see where you might be able to use automation or robotics. Robotics, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI) are poised to take over the global manufacturing sector as it begins its fourth transformation. Since the 1800s, the human species has gone through three industrial revolutions, each marked by the introduction of exciting new technology that enhanced manufacturing and processes.

In a video ad Google posted on Twitter, its yet-to-be-launched AI chatboard Bard confidently spouted misinformation about the James Webb Space Telescope. "JWST took the very first pictures of a planet outside of our own solar system," the chatbot replied, which is patently false. Now, the tech giant is looking to improve Bard's accuracy, and according to CNBC, it's asking employees for help. Google's VP for search, Prabhakar Raghavan, reportedly sent an email to staff members, asking them to rewrite Bard responses on topics they know well. The chatbot "learns best by example," Raghavan said, and training it with factual answers will help improve its accuracy.

Since ChatGPT took the world by storm last fall, people have been in a frenzy debating the impact artificial intelligence and other new automated technology will have on America's job market. The "robots are taking our jobs" narrative was further boosted by viral videos showing new, "fully automated" McDonald's and Taco Bell restaurants. The knee-jerk reaction to these videos is to say that robots are coming for our jobs, but while AI and other kinds of automation have progressed, that doesn't mean they're necessarily eliminating jobs. Instead, the new tech is simply changing how we work and what kinds of jobs exist. Automation technology has ushered in a fleet of secret workers behind screens, machines, and smiling robot faces.

Many businesses use call centers as a way to be able to communicate with their customer base. They are beneficial because they provide an easy way for customers to get in touch with a company and vice versa. However, they can also be expensive to operate. This is where artificial intelligence comes in. At its core, artificial intelligence is a way of making a computer system "smart" – that is, able to understand complex tasks and carry out complex commands.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a revolutionary technology disrupting virtually every sector of the economy, from manufacturing and retail to sports and entertainment. The average consumer may not know that AI is all around them. Companies can use AI to curate users' social media feeds, make new drug discoveries, power digital voice assistants, and allow smartphone owners to unlock their phones with facial recognition. One specific type of AI – generative AI – is an advancement in AI that holds great promise. Take a deeper look at generative AI, examples of its common applications, and how it can drive growth for businesses of all types and sizes.