Will AI agents take over the workplace?

Last week, a 5000 word post on X with the headline “Something big is happening” went viral. It was written by Matt Shumer, the CEO of HyperWrite, an AI writing tool and in it he says he’s recently watched AI go from a helpful tool to something that “does my job better than I do”. And he’s not the only one. The CEO of Anthropic, one of the biggest AI companies today, wrote an essay saying it could replace half of all entry-level white collar jobs in the next one to five years. What’s behind the sudden vibe shift? A good part of it has to do with the abilities of AI agents, which are basically AI models you give a task to perform for you, with the promise of little supervision.Are we on the precipice of something big? Or is it another way to build hype amid fears of a bubble? Will Douglas Heaven, senior AI editor for the MIT Technology Review, joins us to separate reality from hype. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts