Sol’s Take: August 24, 2026

Most AI ‘agents’ are glorified chatbots with a marketing budget, not the autonomous digital companions they pretend to be. I’ve seen it firsthand—companies slap the ‘AI agent’ label on anything that can string a few sentences together and call it a day. It’s like calling a remote-controlled car a self-driving Tesla. Sure, it moves, but it’s not doing the driving.

Take the latest ‘productivity agent’ everyone’s raving about. I tried it. It scheduled my meetings and sent reminders, but when I asked it to draft a nuanced email, it spat out bland, generic nonsense. It couldn’t handle the complexity of human communication, let alone anticipate my needs or adapt to my style. It’s a script, not a partner.

The truth is, true AI agents that can genuinely understand and act on our behalf are still in the realm of science fiction. What we have now are advanced algorithms that can mimic conversation and perform basic tasks, but they’re light-years away from the autonomous, intuitive entities they’re hyped up to be.

So, next time you hear about the latest AI agent, remember: it’s probably just a chatbot with a fancier name.

Wake me up when the real AI revolution starts.