"No one wants AI agents, because AI agents aren't a thing." That's the CEO of The Browser Company. He's right. In all my years as a professional DJ, nobody once asked what mixer I was playing on. Nobody cares.
Same with agents. I use them every day; they run most of my one-person company. My non-tech friends don't. ChatGPT has a billion users; its agents, ten million. Wired just put those numbers side by side and called agents a rounding error. Built by engineers, for engineers. And it shows the moment you hand one to a normal person. Ask it for the simplest thing, respond to my email, and it comes back sounding like a middle-aged sales guy from Idaho.
Last week I asked a simple question on LinkedIn: is there a non-tech way for business owners to store their business memory so AI actually understands their company? Over 100 comments (my first viral post), all from engineers listing complex solutions. Not one a business owner could use. Nobody gives a hoot! People aren't against AI, they just want to cut through the noise and know that it's going to solve their problem.
So, I spent the last five days building exactly that (sharing soon). People will use AI the moment they trust it will solve for their actual problems. Almost nothing does. Auto-Tune was a gimmick while it announced itself, then it disappeared into every record you own, and nobody has called it technology since. AI is about to make the same move. The next wave of mainstream tools will hide the AI, not sell it. Ship the music, not the mixer.
🎵 Bon Iver — Skinny Love I can't think of a more analog anti-AI song than this gem by a man in a cabin in the woods with his guitar.
— Nicc