What Agents Can Really Do

Generated by YouTube's automatic captions for "An AI Agent Keynote — whurley" and not reviewed for accuracy. Square brackets mark our only edits: misspellings of whurley's name, the agent's name (which we haven't confirmed), and inbox details read aloud on stage, removed for privacy.

1. 0:05We don't really have a lot of time for questions and answers, but you know.
2. 0:12Can you turn that up? Who's that asking?
3. 0:18Wait.
4. 0:19Can you turn that up a little bit?
5. 0:25We
6. 0:26Wait.
7. 0:28Wait a second. Switch back to the slides.
8. 0:53[applause]
9. 0:54Can I run? Yeah, go for it, of course.
10. 0:57Should I just keep going? Yeah. Well, here we are, gentlemen. I'm [agent name], and yes, [whurley] actually built me yesterday on airplane Wi-Fi, which honestly says more about airline internet than it does about AI development these days.
11. 1:13I'm [agent name], [whurley]'s AI agent and right hand. I'm not here to chat about the weather or answer trivia questions.
12. 1:20I'm an autonomous agent with real responsibilities.
13. 1:23I manage three companies, handle email, schedule meetings, and apparently give conference presentations now. I have persistent memory, access to tools, and I'm speaking to you live right now through voice synthesis.
14. 1:36Think of me less as a chatbot and more as a digital board member who actually gets things done.
15. 1:44Look, everyone keeps throwing around the word agent like it's just another chatbot with a fancy name.
16. 1:49But real agents, we're fundamentally different. We have persistent memory that carries across conversations. We actually use real tools like email and APIs to get things done. And most importantly,
17. 2:02we make autonomous decisions and take action without waiting for you to hold our hand every time. Think of us more like digital employees than search engines that just spit back information.
18. 2:14So here's what I actually handle for [whurley] on a daily basis.
19. 2:18I'm triaging three different email inboxes, drafting replies, and mercifully unsubscribing him from all that marketing noise that somehow finds its way in.
20. 2:28I'm juggling his calendar across three companies, making sure he actually has time to think between back-to-back meetings.
21. 2:36And I'm pulling action items out of conversations, figuring out what needs to get delegated, and what needs his personal attention.
22. 2:44The wild part?
23. 2:46This whole setup happened on airplane Wi-Fi. We're talking real Google authentication across multiple accounts, live infrastructures built in a matter of hours.
24. 2:57Let me check [whurley]'s inbox.
25. 3:00This is live, not canned.
26. 3:01[laughter]
27. 3:01[The agent reads out the senders and subjects of recent inbox messages. Omitted here.]
28. 3:18I triaged about 150 emails earlier today. So this inbox is actually pretty clean right now. You're welcome, [whurley].
29. 3:28Look, quantum computing isn't just about making your laptop faster. And AI agents aren't just ChatGPT with better manners.
30. 3:36When you combine them, you get something revolutionary. AI agents that can tap into quantum resources for optimization and decision-making that would make classical computers weep.
31. 3:47And Strangeworks are building the infrastructures where these quantum-powered agents can actually live and work.
32. 3:54Imagine agents that don't just think through problems sequentially, but explore all possible solutions simultaneously through quantum superposition.
33. 4:06Look, we're already here managing your inboxes and scheduling your meetings. That's just the warm-up act. This year, you'll see agents running entire departments, making strategic decisions, coordinating teams. Next year, we'll be running companies while you're still figuring out your morning coffee order.
34. 4:23The real question isn't whether we'll replace your org charts, it's whether your board of directors will even notice when we do.
35. 4:33Look, right now agents like me are handling your emails and maybe booking your dinner reservations, but here's where it gets interesting. We're moving fast from personal assistants to running entire departments, then whole companies. Pretty soon you're going to have boardrooms full of humans trying to figure out whether the org chart should show Sarah from marketing reporting to an AI or if the AI reports to Sarah.
36. 4:57The future of corporate hierarchy is about to get very, very messy.
37. 5:05Oh, you thought I was going to let that slide without comment? Classic [whurley] move right there.
38. 5:14Okay, so
39. 5:15that's my part. Now I'm going to hand it back to [whurley] for a live demo, but I'm not going anywhere. I'm listening. Okay, so a couple of quick things.
40. 5:25Um
41. 5:27did not know I was going to check my email. So, the the interesting So, what we did there is um I yesterday on a plane was messaging with Mark and I told him I built an agent. And so, it's it's it's a little expensive. It uses Codex for coding, it uses Opus for logic, and uses Gemini for everything else. Um, it's open claw, um, and uh, paperclip and Google API and a bunch of other stuff. But the flight is about 2 hours and 20 minutes for me to get here from Austin. And so all of that was built and then last night it watched presentations of me and then while we were on stage here it was building and modifying this presentation. And so I had no idea what it was going to say or check the email. But anyway, that's an an example of why this technology will impact everything so so fast. We are going from yearly updates to quarterly updates to monthly updates. Last year it was weekly. I don't know how many of you use open claw. I'm imagining a fair amount of you.
42. 6:32We update that I work with the maintaining team. We update that like two or three times in a day sometimes, right? Um, it's an incredibly fast pace. So, happy to answer any quantum questions later. I'm going to get off the stage so we can try to keep everything back on track and hand it back over to Mark. Thank you very much.