Good morning! My Claude Duet agent has made me four to-do lists, so I’ll make this quick so I can get to all of them. More below on my adventures with Anthropic’s agent and how it stacks up against Muse, Dot and Instinct.
Then, lots of news: Why Google has managed to upset just about everyone, Apple embraces vertical tabs and Microsoft’s efforts to make Windows run better on more affordable hardware. And finally, this week in corded headphone news: Nathan Fielder’s headphones. The wired revolution continues!
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Over the past week, I’ve made room for yet another AI agent in my life: Anthropic’s Claude Duet. I’ve been testing it alongside Meta’s Muse, OpenAI’s Dot and Instinct. And one thing became clear quickly: Duet is here to work. Work-work. Your actual paying job. Not your unpaid second job of running your home or personal life.
Within seconds of setting it up, Duet announced: “I’m going to check your apps to determine who you are and how I can help. Be right back.” A few minutes later: “Your November to-do list is drafted. Should I add it to Notion?” Then: “The five book event thank yous are drafted. You should approve and tell me the next steps.”
Whoa, Duet, at least buy me a coffee before assigning me homework.
While my Meta Muse has been tracking my health goals and keeping tabs on things I want to buy, and my OpenAI Dot has been making restaurant reservations (not very good ones, I might add), Claude Duet went straight for my to-do lists. It revised my existing list, created another based on files in my Google Drive and then made yet another by cross-referencing my Google Calendar.
But all this list-making gets at something important about the growing crop of AI agents: What will set them apart isn’t necessarily how smart they are but what information they can access and what they’re built to do with it.
As Anthropic made clear in its announcement, Claude Duet is aimed squarely at professionals, especially small-business owners like myself. So, is it the helpful new co-worker I’ve been waiting for, or an intern who tries to help but just doesn’t do much? Here’s what I’ve liked—and disliked—after a week of testing.
Fun fact: “The Oregon Trail” computer game was created in 1971 by student teachers in Minnesota as a text-based game for a Teletype machine. It went on to become the most successful educational game of all time. AI will never replace the visceral feeling of dying from dysentery.
This newsletter was written and curated by Joanna Stern and Adele Lowitz.
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