“We automated 150 tasks with AI Agents, just copy us” - Microsoft AI



AI Summary

Podcast Summary

  • Topic: Automating tasks with AI agents, impact of reasoning models, and personal use of AI agents at work.
  • Guests: Two AI agent experts from Microsoft.

Windows Agent Arena

  • Description: A benchmark for testing AI agents on real-world tasks in computing environments.
  • Purpose: To measure agents’ performance on common tasks within Windows OS.
  • Significance: Moves beyond memorization benchmarks to practical tasks that matter to users.
  • Future of Agents: The experts anticipate agents that can handle less common applications with fewer users.

Agent Performance and Benchmarks

  • Performance Metrics: New benchmarks like Mind Web, Web Arena, Visual Web Arena, UFO, OS World, and Android World are emerging.
  • Human Performance: Casual Windows users have a 74% success rate on the benchmark tasks.
  • Agent Adoption: For mainstream adoption, agents need high success rates and safe, robust ways for human intervention.

AI Agent Development

  • Agent Components: Agents need to reason, plan, and execute.
  • Microsoft’s Approach: They use an internal proprietary perception model and a planner agent.
  • Customization vs. Accessibility: There’s a trade-off between ease of use and the ability to fine-tune details.

Future of Work with AI Agents

  • Skill Level Impact: AI agents may assist beginners more than experts.
  • Personal Preferences: Users will find unique ways to incorporate AI agents into their workflows.
  • Security and Privacy: Certain industries may have restrictions on AI agent use.

AI Agent Interaction

  • Modalities: Agents will likely use multiple modalities (text, voice, vision) depending on the task and user preferences.
  • Custom Agents: The experts hope for a future where users can develop personalized agents.

AI Agent Platforms and Open Source

  • Windows Agent Arena: A platform for testing and improving AI agents.
  • Open Source vs. Closed Source: The competition between the two drives innovation.

Personal Use of AI Agents

  • GitHub Copilot: Used by the experts for coding assistance.
  • GPT Models: Used for reasoning and ideation.

Impact of Advanced Reasoning Models

  • Reasoning Models: They offer the potential for handling complex tasks but may require more resources.
  • Accessibility: There may be a divide in who can afford to run cutting-edge models.

Interacting with AI Agents

  • Modalities: The ideal medium for interaction will depend on the task and user needs.
  • Contextual Understanding: AI agents need to understand the context and inherent knowledge that humans possess.

Windows Agent Arena Usage

  • Setup: Users can set up the environment and run benchmarks through GitHub.
  • Contribution: Open for contributions to extend tasks and bring in new agents.

Detailed Instructions and URLs

  • No specific CLI commands, website URLs, or detailed instructions were provided in the transcript.