Then Instinct, an invite-only AI agent that communicates with users through iMessage and WhatsApp, started popping off in the Bay Area. It connects to your email, calendar, and messaging apps. Think of it as OpenClaw for normies.
The company, which launched in private beta in February, is reportedly in talks to raise $1 billion on top of the $350 million it’s already raised, bringing its valuation to $10 billion, according to The Information. Instinct’s moment in the spotlight comes as Meta is experiencing its own unexpected burst of popularity thanks to Muse, an AI assistant the tech giant launched earlier this month. As of writing, Muse is the most popular free app in Apple’s App Store, with more than 900,000 downloads, according to third-party estimates.
The commentator class on X seems genuinely excited about it, despite the fact that it rolled out with a serious security vulnerability that would have “let attackers do ‘whatever’ they wanted on a victim’s Mac,” according to Ars Technica. I’m not about to give Meta a ton of my personal information, but if Muse can keep me logged into Bloomberg or unsubscribe me from Hot Yoga São Paulo, which has been emailing me once a week since 2017, I’ll reconsider. Agent Provocateur The divide between people who use AI agents for everything and those who have never tried one has never been wider.
It explains, in part, why tech CEOs were largely caught off guard by the data center backlash. If you think agents can automate the majority of people’s administrative drudgery and turbocharge their productivity, the costs and disruptions associated with building data centers might look like an acceptable trade-off. But if you’re using chatbots as a fancy form of Google, that deal is probably much less appealing.
The overarching problem, as technology journalist Jasmine Sun writes, is that “most people’s problems are not software-shaped, and most won’t notice even when they are.” AI agents, like chatbots, still require a lot of input and direction from users. If you know what you want—help with your homework, a virtual girlfriend—the tools are eager to provide. But if you don’t, well, welcome to the permanent underclass.
I was eager to avoid such a fate. I may not be agentic, but I like to think I’m action-oriented. Surely I could identify a software-shaped problem in my life.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
