Silicon Valley is already convinced that AI agents are the future, with developers building payment systems for them, automating their own jobs, and attempting to stop them from hacking other organisations. Yet most people outside the tech industry have never touched an AI agent. That might be because tech companies haven’t given them a good reason to.
“Hot take … isn’t it kinda crazy that nobody is really using AI Agents,” Josh Miller, CEO of The Browser Company, wrote in a viral X post this week. “Theoretically, the tech is ready for AI agents to totally transform how we work and live our lives … but alas the general public dgaf” (doesn’t give a fuck).
Miller’s agentic epiphany resonated with many in Silicon Valley, where people are broadly bewildered by the fact that the general public doesn’t seem to care about its latest obsession. Miller told me in an interview on Wednesday that he fired off his post while half asleep during a family trip to Europe, but he stands by it. He says the industry needs to focus on building agent products that people actually want.
“I just have not heard a single person outside of the tech community talk about an agent that they use,” Miller says. “As excited and optimistic as we as an industry may be about the frontier and recursive self-improvement, it’s worth pausing and just saying, ‘Huh, what?'”
The numbers don’t add up
Last month, OpenAI said that its Codex and ChatGPT Work agents collectively have about 10 million weekly users. People close to Anthropic tell me that its Claude Code and Cowork agents are seeing similar levels of adoption. Compared to chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini, which both have around a billion monthly active users on average, agents amount to basically a rounding error.
That’s a problem for the AI labs. Most consumers are using generative AI today for fairly simple tasks, such as looking up information and chatting. But Silicon Valley has spent billions training models that can do far more, and agents represent a way to capitalise on that investment—if people actually use them.
This tracks with broader concerns I’ve been hearing among AI insiders, who note that although they have poured considerable resources into building AI agents, no one has created a killer consumer product so far. When, if ever, will the ChatGPT moment happen for agents?
Miller’s track record
Despite Miller’s self-deprecating personality—he frequently noted he is “just” a sociology major—I think his arguments are worth paying attention to. His latest startup developed Arc, a web browser with a cult following, and it was acquired by Atlassian last year for $610 million. His first company, Branch, was bought by Facebook in 2014, and Miller also previously served as the White House’s first director of product under President Obama.
Miller’s bigger point is not just that AI agents haven’t caught on yet. It’s that they are more of a technology than a stand-alone product.
“No one wants AI agents, because AI agents aren’t a thing. It is an invented frame made up by our industry to collectively refer to something,” says Miller. “Let’s make a product that makes you calm, focused, and inflow right when you open your laptop. And the fact that we’re able to do that because there’s a thing called a ‘harness’ that calls up tools—who cares? Like, no one needs to know that.”
Miller has firsthand experience to back up his claims. He says The Browser Company’s most popular feature ever is a personalised morning briefing for users in its AI-powered browser, Dia. When people open their laptop, they receive a homepage with a greeting, a daily to-do list populated from their calendar and email, and some random tidbits designed to spark joy—such as a piece of art. Technically, Miller says, the feature was only made possible by an AI agent, but the user doesn’t need to know that.
What it means
Miller’s arguments are convenient coming from someone who sells an AI-powered web browser. But I think he’s correct that today’s agentic products are largely not designed with consumers in mind. Tech companies are shipping the most impressive things their models can do—such as navigating a website or writing code—rather than creating products tailored to their customers’ desires. Those capabilities may become great features some day, but right now, they feel more like demos.
Miller blames the problem on groupthink in the AI industry. Many people who are building these technologies are totally obsessed with them, and they often have a particular sci-fi vision for how the products should look and feel. Last summer, when The Browser Company was exploring being acquired, Miller says he met with many of the leaders at top AI labs.
“It was wild to me. I think every single lab but one mentioned the movie Her as the way they articulated their vision,” says Miller, referencing the 2013 Spike Jonze film. “I have a lot of respect for anyone that says, ‘Hey, here’s where I think the world should go, and I’m going to go there.’ But I think there is sort of a lack of diversity of opinions and convictions.”
The latest trend with AI agents is giving people the power to build personal software to automate parts of their life, such as building pitch decks, organising datasets, and other tasks. I’ve personally been using ChatGPT Work and Claude Cowork a lot, and I’ve found them to be more useful than their predecessors. But there’s a limited pool of people interested in building their own productivity tools, and the industry needs some bigger ideas if it wants to reach the goal of mainstream adoption.
Miller says he hopes his message reaches beyond OpenAI and Anthropic and resonates with founders and product builders broadly. His goal is to push people to think outside the box about what AI agent products could look like, and then bring those visions to life.
“Let’s not just accept this narrative of AI agents and actually question what are good products and tools that are joyful, useful, and approachable,” says Miller. “Who gives a shit if it looks like an AI agent? No one uses AI agents.”
This is an edition of Maxwell Zeff’s Model Behavior newsletter. Read previous newsletters here.
