We used to click through to websites and open apps. More and more, a single assistant does the work in the background. Here is what that changes, and why it already happened with Google and Stack Overflow.
Headless does not mean “no screen anywhere.” It means you are not required to use the company’s app or site to finish the job.
You might say: “Book a flight and a hotel in Tokyo.” A helper (with hooks into services, e.g. MCP or other agent APIs) talks to airlines and hotels for you. You might never see their homepage or their “join our club” popup.
Whilst I can see where the author is going with this, I can’t see some tasks, particularly booking concert tickets, being done by AI agents. Whilst it may be convenient for end users, it’s also open to exploitation by scalpers.
I can’t see some tasks, particularly booking concert tickets, being done by AI agents
I’m not sure I follow… Care to elaborate?
I can absolutely see the potential for abuse and a race to produce faster agents. Now that I think about it, before too long “Time To First Token” will become an uninteresting metric, and agents will all be steerable/interruptible mid-task, enabling legit real-time language processing (as opposed to the batch-mode they currently have).
Whilst I can see where the author is going with this, I can’t see some tasks, particularly booking concert tickets, being done by AI agents. Whilst it may be convenient for end users, it’s also open to exploitation by scalpers.
Ohgosh! We wouldn’t want scalpers to ruin the concert ticket buying experience with bots! That would be awful…
/somuchs
But right, I’m always going to want to make choices myself for things like seats in a theater, or which oranges I want at the grocery.
I’m not sure I follow… Care to elaborate?
I can absolutely see the potential for abuse and a race to produce faster agents. Now that I think about it, before too long “Time To First Token” will become an uninteresting metric, and agents will all be steerable/interruptible mid-task, enabling legit real-time language processing (as opposed to the batch-mode they currently have).