How AI Agents Reshape Knowledge Work: Autonomy, Efficiency, and Scope
Frontier AI systems are bridging the gap between intelligence and utility by shifting from conversational assistants to autonomous agents that execute tasks end to end. Using production data from Perplexity's Search and Computer products, we study this transition by examining how AI agents accelerate and reshape knowledge work. Three key empirical findings emerge. First, using sessions with near-identical initial query pairs as natural experiments for the same underlying task attempted with both products, Computer performs 26 minutes of autonomous work per user session, versus 33 seconds for Search. Computer automates task decomposition and execution that Search users might otherwise manu...
| Authors | Jeremy Yang, Kate Zyskowski, Noah Yonack et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.AI |
| Published | 5 June 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 11 June 2026 |
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