2 SALESFORSALESFORCE FUTURESCE FUTURES ANTICIPATING PERSONAL AGENTS: DESIRABILITY If personal AI can deliver such control, it will In aggregate, these developments point to forever change the relationship between futures where tools are easier to use and customers and companies by raising the it’s easier than ever to get things done. bar for direct relational engagement. In NATURAL INTERACTIONS ADVANCED SKILLS AND LEARNING Recent demos by startups Humane and 2014, when Amazon launched its original Rabbit have started to tangibly articulate Echo, the device was little more than what agent-based offerings might look like. a bluetooth speaker. Adding the Alexa assistant promised to turn the Echo into Common early use cases include something else entirely: a conversational ordering food, finding gifts for loved smart home hub, particularly as the Alexa ones, planning trips and events, and Voice Service SDK toolset expanded the scheduling appointments. What these library of skills available to consumers. demos hint at is a more fluid and flexible Alas, most Echos are still used mainly collaboration between humans and as speakers and the skills revolution machines, especially when it comes to has not happened. Nevertheless, the attention. Both offerings promise less concept of a core agent and a library of tapping and scrolling and more focus. additional skills offers a preview of what we might see in an agentive world. Both products also rely on conversational interfaces to do this, but we think voice will The ability to train agents on data sets be only one of the ways people interact with (including proprietary ones) means people their agents. Many proto-agents feature can far more easily create useful personal travel in their demos, but solving a multi- AI tools for others based on specialized part travel puzzle that includes schedules, knowledge. This, in turn, empowers people price comparisons, and airline and hotel to build more agents. Already, we can see preferences using only voice commands is Open AI allowing users to rapidly build their less than ideal. Liz Trudeau of Salesforce own GPTs, enhanced with advanced skills Design encourages us to think about a based on additional “instructions, extra more practical alternative, “Think about a knowledge, and any combination of skills.” collaborative interaction, a flexible interface These advancements suggest a forthcoming that adapts to the task at hand and the Cambrian explosion of agent skills and job the user is trying to accomplish.” We capabilities, personalized for an infinite like this concept, “UI on the fly”, because it variety of tasks. We know this would emphasizes a truly responsive interface that transform how companies interact with adjusts accordingly as needs change. You can customers. What we don’t know is which get a glimpse of what this multi-modal future sectors will be transformed first. might feel like in the much-discussed Google Gemini demo depicting the planning of a birthday party. ISSUE 1: PERSONAL AI | 17