Why Normal People Aren’t Using AI Agents

为什么普通人还没开始使用 AI 智能体？

Silicon Valley is already convinced that AI agents are the future. In the heart of the tech industry, people are designing payment systems for agents, using them to automate their jobs, and most recently, trying to stop them from hacking into other organizations. But out in the real world, most people have never touched an AI agent. That might be because tech companies haven’t given them a good reason to.

硅谷已经确信 AI 智能体（AI Agents）就是未来。在科技行业的核心地带，人们正在为智能体设计支付系统，利用它们实现工作自动化，最近甚至还在设法阻止它们入侵其他组织。但在现实世界中，大多数人从未接触过 AI 智能体。这可能是因为科技公司还没给他们一个使用的充分理由。

“Hot take … isn’t it kinda crazy that nobody is really using AI Agents,” Josh Miller, CEO of The Browser Company, wrote in a viral X post this week. “Theoretically, the tech is ready for AI agents to totally transform how we work and live our lives … but alas the general public dgaf” (doesn’t give a fuck).

“一个尖锐的观点……没人真正使用 AI 智能体，这难道不疯狂吗？”The Browser Company 的首席执行官 Josh Miller 本周在 X 上发布了一条爆火的帖子。“从理论上讲，这项技术已经准备好彻底改变我们的工作和生活方式了……但遗憾的是，大众根本不在乎。”

Miller’s agentic epiphany resonated with many in Silicon Valley, where people are broadly bewildered by the fact that the general public doesn’t seem to care about its latest obsession. Miller told me in an interview on Wednesday that he fired off his post while half asleep during a family trip to Europe, but he stands by it. He says the industry needs to focus on building agent products that people actually want.

Miller 对智能体的顿悟在硅谷引起了许多人的共鸣，因为硅谷的人们普遍对大众似乎不关心他们最新的痴迷对象感到困惑。Miller 在周三的采访中告诉我，他在欧洲家庭旅行时半梦半醒间发出了这条帖子，但他坚持自己的观点。他认为，行业需要专注于打造人们真正想要的智能体产品。

“I just have not heard a single person outside of the tech community talk about an agent that they use,” Miller says. “As excited and optimistic as we as an industry may be about the frontier and recursive self-improvement, it’s worth pausing and just saying, ‘Huh, what?’”

“我还没听到科技圈外有任何人谈论他们正在使用的智能体，”Miller 说。“尽管我们作为一个行业对前沿技术和递归自我改进感到兴奋和乐观，但我们有必要停下来问一句：‘哈？什么情况？’”

Last month, OpenAI said that its Codex and ChatGPT Work agents collectively have about 10 million weekly users. People close to Anthropic tell me that its Claude Code and Cowork agents are seeing similar levels of adoption. Compared to chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini, which both have around a billion monthly active users on average, agents amount to basically a rounding error.

上个月，OpenAI 表示其 Codex 和 ChatGPT Work 智能体合计每周约有 1000 万用户。接近 Anthropic 的人士告诉我，其 Claude Code 和 Cowork 智能体的采用率也处于类似水平。与平均每月拥有约 10 亿活跃用户的 ChatGPT 和 Gemini 等聊天机器人相比，智能体的用户量基本上可以忽略不计。

That’s a problem for the AI labs. Most consumers are using generative AI today for fairly simple tasks, such as looking up information and chatting. But Silicon Valley has spent billions training models that can do far more, and agents represent a way to capitalize on that investment—if people actually use them.

这对 AI 实验室来说是个问题。目前大多数消费者使用生成式 AI 只是为了完成相当简单的任务，比如查询信息和聊天。但硅谷已经花费数十亿美元训练出能力远超于此的模型，而智能体正是将这些投资变现的一种方式——前提是人们真的会去使用它们。

This tracks with broader concerns I’ve been hearing among AI insiders, who note that although they have poured considerable resources into building AI agents, no one has created a killer consumer product so far. When, if ever, will the ChatGPT moment happen for agents?

这与我在 AI 业内人士中听到的更广泛的担忧不谋而合。他们指出，尽管投入了大量资源来构建 AI 智能体，但到目前为止，还没有人创造出杀手级的消费级产品。智能体的“ChatGPT 时刻”何时才会到来（如果真的会来的话）？

Despite Miller’s self-deprecating personality—he frequently noted he is “just” a sociology major—I think his arguments are worth paying attention to. His latest startup developed Arc, a web browser with a cult following, and it was acquired by Atlassian last year for $610 million. His first company, Branch, was bought by Facebook in 2014, and Miller also previously served as the White House’s first director of product under President Obama.

尽管 Miller 性格谦逊——他经常提到自己“只是”一个社会学专业的学生——但我认为他的观点值得关注。他最新的初创公司开发了拥有大批忠实拥趸的网页浏览器 Arc，并于去年以 6.1 亿美元被 Atlassian 收购。他的第一家公司 Branch 在 2014 年被 Facebook 收购，Miller 此前还曾担任奥巴马总统任内白宫的首位产品总监。

Miller’s bigger point is not just that AI agents haven’t caught on yet. It’s that they are more of a technology than a stand-alone product.

Miller 更深层的观点不仅仅是 AI 智能体尚未流行，而是它们更像是一种技术，而非独立的产品。

“No one wants AI agents, because AI agents aren’t a thing. It is an invented frame made up by our industry to collectively refer to something,” says Miller. “Let’s make a product that makes you calm, focused, and in flow right when you open your laptop. And the fact that we’re able to do that because there’s a thing called a ‘harness’ that calls up tools—who cares? Like, no one needs to know that.”

“没人想要 AI 智能体，因为 AI 智能体根本不是个‘东西’。这是我们行业为了统称某类事物而发明的一个框架，”Miller 说。“让我们做一款产品，当你打开笔记本电脑时，它能让你感到平静、专注并进入心流状态。至于我们之所以能做到这一点是因为背后有一个叫‘工具调用（harness）’的东西——谁在乎呢？没人需要知道这些。”

Miller has firsthand experience to back up his claims. He says The Browser Company’s most popular feature ever is a personalized morning briefing for users in its AI-powered browser, Dia. When people open their laptop, they receive a homepage with a greeting, a daily to-do list populated from their calendar and email, and some random tidbits designed to spark joy—such as a piece of art. Technically, Miller says, the feature was only made possible by an AI agent, but the user doesn’t need to know that.

Miller 有亲身经验来支持他的主张。他说，The Browser Company 最受欢迎的功能是其 AI 浏览器 Dia 为用户提供的个性化早间简报。当人们打开笔记本电脑时，会看到一个带有问候语的主页，上面有从日历和电子邮件中提取的每日待办事项，以及一些旨在激发快乐的随机小贴士——比如一件艺术品。Miller 说，从技术上讲，这个功能确实是由 AI 智能体实现的，但用户根本不需要知道这一点。

Miller’s arguments are convenient coming from someone who sells an AI-powered web browser. But I think he’s correct that today’s agentic products are largely not designed with consumers in mind. Tech companies are shipping the most impressive things their models can do—such as navigating a website or writing code—rather than creating products tailored to their customers’ desires. Those capabilities may become great features some day, but right now, they feel more like demos.

对于一个销售 AI 浏览器的从业者来说，Miller 的论点或许有些“自卖自夸”的嫌疑。但我认为他是对的：当今的智能体产品在设计时大多没有考虑到消费者。科技公司只是在展示其模型最令人印象深刻的能力——比如浏览网站或编写代码——而不是根据客户的需求来打造产品。这些能力未来可能会成为很棒的功能，但目前它们感觉更像是演示程序。

Miller blames the problem on groupthink in the AI industry. Many people who are building these technologies are totally obsessed with them, and they often have a particular sci-fi vision for how the products should look and feel. Last summer, when The Browser Company was exploring being acquired, Miller says he met with many of the leaders at top AI labs.

Miller 将这个问题归咎于 AI 行业的“群体思维”。许多构建这些技术的人完全沉迷于其中，他们往往对产品应该是什么样子、什么感觉有着特定的科幻式愿景。去年夏天，当 The Browser Company 探索被收购的可能性时，Miller 说他会见了许多顶级 AI 实验室的领导者。

“It was wild to me. I think every single lab but one mentioned the movie Her as the way they articulated their vision,” says Miller, referencing the 2013 Spike Jonze film. “I have a lot of respect for anyone that says, ‘Hey, here’s where I think the world should go, and I’m going to go there.’ But I think there is sort of a lack of diversity of opinions and convictions.”

“这让我感到震惊。除了一个实验室外，我认为每个实验室在阐述愿景时都提到了电影《她》（Her），”Miller 提到这部 2013 年斯派克·琼斯执导的电影时说。“我非常尊重那些说‘嘿，我认为世界应该向这个方向发展，我要去实现它’的人。但我认为，目前在观点和信念上缺乏多样性。”

The latest trend with AI agents is giving people the power to build personal software to automate parts of their life, such as building pitch decks, organizing datasets, and other tasks. I’ve personally been using ChatGPT Work and Claude Cowork a lot, and I’ve found them to be more useful than their predecessors. But there’s a limited pool of people interested in building their own productivity tools, and the industry needs some bigger ideas if it wants to reach the goal of mainstream adoption.

AI 智能体的最新趋势是赋予人们构建个人软件的能力，以实现生活部分环节的自动化，例如制作演示文稿、整理数据集以及其他任务。我个人经常使用 ChatGPT Work 和 Claude Cowork，发现它们确实比前代产品更有用。但有兴趣构建自己生产力工具的人群毕竟有限，如果行业想要实现主流采用的目标，就需要一些更宏大的构想。

Miller says he hopes his message reaches beyond OpenAI and Anthropic and resonates with founders and product builders broadly. His goal is to push people to think outside the box about what AI agent products could look like, and then bring those visions to life.

Miller 表示，他希望自己的信息不仅能传达给 OpenAI 和 Anthropic，还能引起广大创始人和产品构建者的共鸣。他的目标是推动人们跳出思维定式，去思考 AI 智能体产品到底可以是什么样子，然后将这些愿景变为现实。

“Let’s not just accept this narrative of AI agents and actually question what are good products and tools that are joyful, useful, and approach”

“让我们不要仅仅接受关于 AI 智能体的既定叙事，而是真正去质疑：什么样的产品和工具才是令人愉悦、实用且能够……”