Today, Explained - When AI agents run your life

Episode Date: October 25, 2026

What you gain, and what you give up, when you let AI agents take control. This episode was produced by Kelli Wessinger, edited by Avishay Artsy, fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch, engineered by Bridger Dunnagan, and hosted by Jonquilyn Hill. Various examples of avatars for Muse, Meta's AI agent, during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California on Sept. 23, 2026. Photo by Minh Connors/Bloomberg via Getty Images. If you have a question, give us a call at 1-800-618-8545 or email [e-mail]. Listen to Explain It to Me ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Unlock unlimited free grocery delivery with PC Express Pass. Shop online and get the same low No Frills prices delivered. Get your first year of PC Express Pass for just $2.50 a month. Learn more at no frills.ca. This episode is brought to you by Google Pixel. Picture this. You got your favorite artist's show. The best song starts.

And for once, you want to actually watch it. Not be stuck behind your phone trying to get the perfect shot. Meet Magic Capture on the Google Pixel 11 Pro. With just one tap, Magic Capture can take both video and high-quality photos, automatically finding the best moments so you can get back to the music. Ask more of your phone and try the Google Pixel 11 Pro. Check it out at store.google.com. I'm a big proponent of AI agents.

For me, it's been nothing but a gateway to more time spent thinking and ideating and creating. It's almost too amazing, and I can feel it analyzing my entire hard drive. and all of my information. There's like an example of AI agents in the Matrix. Like literally the bad guy is an agent. There are days where so much needs to get done. I daydream about having a clone of myself. Paying bills, renewing my driver's license,

keeping up with doctor's appointments, planning meals. And that doesn't even begin to touch my job or my social life. Silicon Valley says it has a fix for this kind of mental overload. They don't want to clone us, at least not yet, but they do think they have the next best thing. I'm John Glenn Hill, and this week on Explained to Me from Vox, what you gain and what you give up when you let AI agents take the reins. So what is an AI agent exactly? Essentially, one way to think about this is agents are the next evolution of chatbots. Reese Rogers is a senior reporter at Wired where he covers software, and he's been testing out some different AI agents, also known as agentic AI.

So when you're thinking about an agent, I'd create this mental model of some tiny digital assistant that's constantly searching the web, going through your email, and checking your calendar, trying to find ways it could proactively. be helpful for you. So where a chatbot was more turn-based, right? You asked a question and then the AI generated an answer, agents are more proactive. It's scanning your email 24-7 and sending you a message maybe highlighting a potential calendar conflict. Okay. What agents are out there right now? I mean, something new is always out, but what's the landscape looking like right now? Yeah. So at the start of this year, there was a tool called OpenClaw that really started. sparked this with early adopters in San Francisco. But now there are much more consumer-friendly versions, with one of the most notable being

Meta's Muse. Launched about a month ago, that agent now has millions of users. So it's grown quite popular, but there's also a tool from OpenAI called Dots. But where MetaMuse is free to download, OpenA's Dots is still behind $100 a month paywall. So that's really... That's a lot of money. Yeah, that one for now is for power users. But Metamuse is kind of the entryway that a lot of people are experimenting with agents right now.

One personal example to share something that I've actually been using agents for is our couch is broken. Oh. And finding a new couch has been a pain. We want a sleeper bed, but we want these specific colors. We have this specific budget. I want something maybe on sale. I love a good deal. So I've been using Meta's Muse and Opening Eyes.

to try to find a few different options for us. And one interesting thing is Meta's Muse is connected to Facebook Marketplace. So there's these really good integrations where I can give it all these details, and it found a few good couches that are only maybe a couple blocks from me. But also, I really enjoyed Open AIs Dots experience as well for this. I spent about an hour talking to it on the phone. Oh. And the AIA agent made a packet of all these different options I could find,

and just this morning it flagged that one of them is not 40% off. So I texted my husband. I was like, all right, I think we found our couch. Most people are using this as part of maybe a workflow. So that would be I attach it to my email, I attach it to my calendar, and I'm using it kind of as a personal assistant to kind of organize my life. But people have been quite creative. One of the breakout uses for Meta's Muse is people have been connecting their bank account statements and then using it to scan for subscriptions they might want to cancel. So it can be used in many different ways. Though I will say I do not connect it to my own bank account for a myriad of reasons. Yeah, I'm not going to lie. The idea

of giving any third-party access to my bank information, it does not thrill me. I don't love that concept. Yeah, and that's one of my biggest concerns about these AI agents is how much personal information we're handing over to these large companies. When I tested Meta's Muse, it wanted access to my emails. Every morning, Muse can review your inbox, surface unanswered emails, and draft responses for you to review. My bank account. I gave Muse read-only access to my bank statements. Even my passport expiration details it asked for it.

It asks permission first. And the pitch is convenience, right? Your AI agent helps you get things done across every part of your life. But Muse users are automatically opted in to have to have to have, having all of their interactions with Muse used to train meta's AI models. So I would definitely recommend if you're sharing personal details, go into the settings and turn that off. Because you might be handing over even more information about yourself than you initially realize. Yeah, what is the privacy situation with all of this? Like, I don't know, we all have various apps where we don't read and click, I agree.

But this feels, I don't know, a little more, it could be a little more invasive. Yeah, especially because it's all about automation. So if you're automating things and it has access to all of your data, it could make mistakes and embarrass you the ways you might not even be thinking about. There was this one really interesting story of someone who connected an AI agent to their work slack in addition to their bank account. And their agent just automatically posted how much money was in their checking account for all of their co-work. to see. Ah, oh, no. Oh, no. I would be mortified. I would need a new job. So there's these kind of mistakes, right, that these AI tools can still make. So if you're interested in experimenting with them, I would just be really thoughtful with how you're setting up these tools,

as well as what kind of information you feel comfortable sharing. How are these AI agents being marketed? I mean, AI is not popular. right now, just, you know, ask any politician who has a data center coming to their state. People are not loving it. How are they trying to sell this to the average person? Yeah. The AI backlash really is at a fever pitch right now. And you could almost see that in the way that AI companies are trying to market these tools. They've really, really leaned into cuteness, into adorable mascots. So whether it is muse, if you haven't seen its agent,

it's worth looking up a photo of the mascot. It looks like a mix between like a Laboooooo and an Ewak. It's like very furry, very cuddly, very cute. Hello, everyone. I'm Agrippa, and I'm here to brainstorm and get things done with you. What should we build? And opening eye schools also have similar kind of like blobs that with like large eyes, you know, that might be a little interring.

Hey, I'm your dot. I'm new in chat, GBT. I'll be here to handle everything that comes your way. Ready to jump in when you need me. So I feel like companies are hearing this kind of feedback that people aren't trusting AI right now. Or maybe they have moral or ethical reasons. They don't want to use these tools.

And you can see in the marketing that these companies are trying to find some way to entice new users. Do you think AI agents are all? ultimately going to kind of, I don't know, worm their way into our lives despite how unpopular AI companies are? I do think so. I would not be surprised if my mom had an agent on her phone now because it does feel like it's breaking through to average people in the way that chat chit had a moment a few years

ago. So even though there's a lot of distrust for large companies like meta, I think there are some appealing parts of this. will bring in millions of people. So I do see this as the future of the internet. You know, when I think of the dream of, I don't know, the average person working in AI in Silicon Valley, it's okay, we're going to use AI. It's going to free up the free time of so many people. Work is going to get done faster. You're going to have more leisure time. Has that been the case for the people you've spoken with? who are using this? Has it given them more free time to enjoy themselves or has it done something else? You would think so, right? You would think that if people are automating these kind of boring aspects of their life, that they would have more time to go touch grass, go see a movie, have some fun. But it does feel like that time just gets filled with other work, other productivity measures.

So while it may be able to take some more annoying or tedious things off of your plate, I am not as optimistic that it's going to give us this utopia freedom where I'm always at the beach. Coming up, AI agents at home. Support for today explain comes from fetch pet insurance. Here's something that might surprise you if you don't listen to the show all the time. But if you have listened to the show very loyally, you've probably heard. heard it before because I've said it before. Every six seconds, a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill over $1,000, according to one study. Be prepared with Fetch Pet Insurance. Fetch

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I'm J-Q. Back with More Explain It to me. My name is Sarie Azute. I'm a mom of three living in Miami. Work and tech. I've been building creative tech software for 15-ish years. And most of the people in my community always saw me as like, oh, some like, she has some, like, weird tech stuff. But the AI agent stuff is the first time that we're like, let's call our friends. She knows she's saving our lives. Sarie's an early adopter when it comes to tech. So when she got an invite to try an AI agent, she was curious how it might help with the time-consuming,

stress-inducing job of being a mom. I mean, you know, they say, like, that as a mom, you should be. like being is more important than doing. But there is just so much doing, right? Like you, you know, wake up and I have to do like meal coordination and get my kids up for breakfast. They have different schools, coordinate carpools, arrange their schedules for the next day. And then, you know, a lot of work during the day, but there's the email from the teacher. There's the 20 group chats asking you for, you know, do you want to participate in this group gift?

You know, a birthday invite. so it's like the constant interruption. I mean, they don't call it the invisible load for no reason. I'm a full-time working mom. I'm spending like eight or nine hours in this office. But I would say two or so hours a day, I'm interrupted for some reason related to running the household. Her AI agent's first test came at the start of the school year. A mom sent me like, hey, did you buy school supplies for the kids yet?

And I'm like, I didn't even know we had. to, she sends me a three-page PDF of all the school supplies we have to buy. And I sort of basically like shared the PDF with Instinct, which is on WhatsApp. It comparison shopped and got everything shipped to her home in time. She was hooked. And then I remember that night coming home, just like feeling so calm and reading my son a book and feeling present. And I was like, wow, I actually like was very cynical about something that is giving me more time for living. Sari is one of several moms I've seen online saying, actually, AIA agents have been a big help at home. I basically am not as scared of the little grunt work stuff because I know I can offload it.

The birthday invite comes in and you have to sign the waiver for the kids party. And it's like, oh my God, I have to go into this interface and, you know, 10 minutes of clicking buttons. And now it's like, great, my AI agent can do that. Like, my energy is, like, intact. Or, you know, the school teacher sends an email like, hey, please send family photos by Thursday. And I'm like, I would love to, but I'm also extremely busy to go to Walgreens right now and print out these photos. And now it's like, okay, let me send the photos to, you know, my agent on WhatsApp and they get printed. And I either just like quickly pick them up or they get delivered to my doorstep.

And so people complain about AI. But to me, like, the old way is like an anti-human way to live. Yeah, I mean, I just find that like life's too short to be like manually filing insurance claims and like being on hold waiting for like the lab tests that the, you know, that the doctor did. Like, I don't know. I feel like it's allowing me to show up in ways that I've always wished I could show up. I just am so strapped for time. Yeah. Does your life feel meaningfully different because you're using this interface because you're getting things done?

using this? I sort of feel less burdened by the invisible load, meaning like I feel like I have, my friends actually describe instinct as the wife they never had, my mom friends. I read that, and I remember like talking to the married women in my life about it, my friends who have already started their families. And I was like, but yeah, doesn't your husband or doesn't your partner, Don't they get it? And the way they look at me, they're like, oh, you sweet summer child, you have no idea. You got to get it done. And I'm like, really? I thought that was what the part. But like every mom I know is like, no, no, I'm doing it. Yeah. I mean, listen, my husband uses it a lot. We have a, you know, a division of labor of sorts. Something gets damaged in the house. Like the AC, he fixes that. So like he's used instinct for like repairs and things. But, you know, the, like, I have. three kids, the amount of like schoolwork that I'm on top of, my son has ADHD. I now have instinct log into his school portal every day and send me a download of all the homework he has, what he needs to submit. And so instead of me being annoyed and frustrated every night,

I just have like a little checklist and I just check in with him. Did you do this or that? And so it's the little things. I mean, my husband is using it for different things, but I mean, They don't call it the invisible load for no reason. Does it free you up for the living more, though? Because I think something that can happen, something that does happen is it's freed up time. And then people are like, well, more work to do. Or does it actually free you up to say, all right, you guys, everyone had a great week this week. I saw that the homework's been checked.

Let's get ice cream. Yeah, yeah, totally. You know, it's funny. I do think there's something fundamentally very human about as more tech has introduced, the bar just gets raised. So, you know, what you would have thought that, you know, when the dishwasher was introduced, that women would spend less time in the kitchen. But turns out the bar is higher you can now host. And so, you know, do you have a pretty table set up? And so that's sort of been like the, I think, the history of this stuff. But I will say one of the surprising discoveries I've had with this stuff is how pro-social it is.

So I'll give you an example. I was in New York last week. I lived in New York for many years before I moved to Miami, and I have my college roommate still lives there. But I went to New York for work, and I was very busy, and I texted my friend when I landed. I'm like, I'm in New York. I don't know if I'll have time, but, you know, maybe we can catch up over coffee. My friend is also on instinct. and instinct has something called the trusted person network.

So it's basically a way for us to coordinate together. Through my agent, my friend basically booked us with our calendars an hour, and we ended up meeting in the West Village for brunch. I feel like people are so negative about this technology. And to me, it's like if we bring the right consciousness to it, it actually can free us and give us more time to be more human. I wonder how do you pick and choose what to use it for? Because I imagine there are some things where it's like, yeah, this is friction, but it's friction I enjoy.

One of the things I loved about growing up, my mom and I, we both love entertaining, we both love hosting, we both love decorating. And so it was like, okay, 18th birthday party, we're having a dinner party, we're going to put the menu together. and we're picking each individual thing. And, you know, we could nowadays offload that to an AI agent, but I don't know, sometimes it's fun to pick the plates and the napkins. Totally, totally. I think the line is different for everybody. For example, I love buying Halloween costumes with my kids.

It's a tradition we have. It's like an experience for us. So for me, that's not something I personally want to use AI for it. But, you know, I think everyone, draws that line differently. And I think we have to give people more credit. It's not just stressed out moms turning to AI. There's a chance that your next coworker might be agentic.

That's next. Support for the show today comes from Monarch. And before you get the butterflies, just so you know, this is about paying off debt. Sometimes paying off debt can feel like a never-ending journey, no matter how many payments you make. It feels like you're nowhere close to the finish line. But Monarch wants to help you make a clear timeline that lets you finally see the end and lets you breathe a little easier. Monarch's debt paydown simulator and visualizer shows your exact debt-free date.

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Learn more at nofrills.ca. A current experience with AI agents is training for my job. And boy, boy, I hate it. It's trash and it's really condescending and terrible. My firm just started using Claude. And I would say that it makes our jobs a lot harder. It is fantastic at finding small code bugs. I would have destroyed my data.

And it has been very useful at sketching out plans. We're back with more explain it to me. I'm JQ. I'm Kate Taylor and I am a senior writer at Wired. Okay, AI, we've been using it on the job for a while now. But recently you wrote a piece called AI agents are about to flood the workforce. No one's really ready for it. What should we be expecting?

How is this different from what's been going on? I think that the biggest change for AI in the workforce now is the idea of AI agents and kind of what their capabilities are. I think especially in the last year to last couple months even with agents kind of being seen as more autonomous, the shift has been like, okay, it's not just you're going to use AI as a tool. It's like AI is going to be your coworker. AI is kind of your chief of staff. So this interesting thing of AI not being like, oh, it's going to take your job, but AI, it is actually working alongside you. What does an AI agent at work do, do? It's kind of like AI can do anything where I talk to people who are embedding it on all of

these different teams. I think one of the most common ones is AI as executive assistants or a chief of staff where it's managing your email. It's setting up your meetings. But people are using AI agents on engineering teams. They're using AI agents on sales teams, like where it's something where, oh, I need to email a bunch of people and try and get them to use my product. Now AI is doing that where you have an agent who is kind of autonomously writing the emails, responding to the emails, setting up first meetings. It's a very, very broad understanding of what agents can be used for now. I think that's interesting, this idea of AI as executive assistant as chief of staff. That used to be the role of a person. Are these tools going to become our actual coworkers?

Like, am I going to have to explain to my parents like, when I'm talking about this thing that happened at work or this thing that happened at work, it's like, no, sorry, that wasn't a person. That was an AI agent. That was not a human being I was talking about. When I was working on this article, I got kind of obsessed with the idea of AI as your coworker and like what it means to be a good co-worker. What you want in a coworker is someone who's like a good hang. It's not necessarily someone who's super productive. So that's something I'm really interested in where it's like, oh my God, if my coworkers are just these agents who are kind of just like not fun to work with, not a good hang, like, is that actually helpful? Hey, how was your weekend?

Great. I worked 24-7 and got so much accomplished. Oh, okay. Cool. But it is interesting where it's now these agents are kind of embedded into Slack. They're in your email. Like, you're talking to them like you would talk to an actual coworker who just isn't in the same office as you. You know, I think that's so interesting because I do value the relationship I have by coworkers, Kelly, who's producing this. Like once a week when we're in office, we have Biscotti time where we go to a coffee shop nearby and we have Biscotti. And it's like one of the best parts of the work week. Are people building emotional connections with the agents they're using at work the same way they would with coworkers?

I think people are starting to build not. exactly a human-to-human relationship with their AI coworkers, but it's definitely more than you would with, like, a tool. Like, oh, I'm not going to chat with Google Sheets about, like, oh, nice job on that. Thank you. Like, it is definitely moving in a direction where I talked to one founder who was saying she would get slacks from people on her engineering team, and they'd be like, oh, yeah, Kayla helped us out on this. And Kayla is an AI agent. I think that people dating chatbots has shown that, people can form these deep connections with AI. And, like, I personally, this is a story I am bracing for within the next year, is like people having emotional affairs with their AI coworkers. I was going to say, people meet their little booze at work. I'm like, oh, no, you're not going to meet your little boo at work because the only option you have for a little boo at work is an AI chatbot.

Genuinely, I am stealing for this where I think it's kind of inevitable. I love you. If people are literally seeking out AI as a romantic partner, like, why wouldn't AI, that's their coworker, have that similar kind of relationship? I think that the biggest thing that AI still can't do in my experience, at least, is it doesn't have the spontaneity. It doesn't have kind of the unexpected element of human relationship. So we don't know what's going to happen. I've heard people complain in the past that their bosses are demanding that they use AI to the point. that it can feel like their use is performative rather than actually helpful. I think it's this

idea that rather than having a problem and using AI to solve for it, you think, I have this tool to fix things. Let me retroactively find the problem. Are these tools starting to be helpful? Again and again, we see more senior executives are much more excited about AI than middle managers or the people who actually work with AI day in and day out. So I think that part of that gap is worrisome. I mean, McKinsey has found that looking for actual enterprise-wide return on investment, like the vast majorities of companies that have deployed AI are not seeing any real financial difference. Individual people might be more efficient, but the entire company as a whole, like they are not making more money or saving money. There's no evidence of that happening at the vast

majority of companies using AI so far. So I don't have to worry about, I don't know, this time next year is explained it to me going to be hosted by an AI agent. I hope not. I'm Johnclan Hill and this is Explain It to Me from Box. I hope not. And that's something where I think that AI is good at summarizing things. I think it's good at kind of doing research, but I don't think it's particularly good at having

like an interesting conversation with someone. Like, so, no, I do not think A is coming for your job, definitely. That's it for this week. Special thanks to Lane Brown. We want your help with an upcoming show about our own intelligence. What does being intelligent mean to you? How should we measure it? Do we overvalue it?

Tell us what you think. give us a call at 1-800-618-8-8-55 or shoot an email to AskVox at Vox.com. If you like listening to this show, consider becoming a Vox member. It's the best way to support us and comes with a ton of cool perks. Head over to Vox.com slash members to learn more. This episode was produced by Kelly Wessinger. It was edited by Avshai Artsy, fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch, engineered by Richard Dunigan, Our executive producer is Miranda Kennedy

and I'm your host, John Gulen Hill. Thank you so much for listening. I'll talk to you soon. Bye. Unlimited free grocery delivery with PC Express Pass. Shop online and get the same low, No Frills prices delivered. Get your first year of PC Express Pass

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