Meet Mark and Sam, the AI agents that ran my errands for a week
Meet Mark and Sam, the AI agents that ran my errands for a week
摘要: October 9, 2026
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Meet Mark and Sam, the AI agents that ran my errands for a week
Meta’s and OpenAI’s new ag
正文
October 9, 2026
min read
Add Us On Google
Add SciAm
Meet Mark and Sam, the AI agents that ran my errands for a week
Meta’s and OpenAI’s new agents can streamline your life. Artificial intelligence researchers helped me test how far to trust them
Mary Randolph
edited by
Eric Sullivan
Jolly, the mascot for Meta's Muse AI agent, greets visitors at Meta Connect in September. Muse and OpenAI's Dots are designed to feel like friends.
Bloomberg / Contributor via Getty Images
“Let me ask Mark and Sam.”
For a week, it was my answer to everything, and my friends and family groaned every time.
Mark and Sam are my assistants—they make grocery lists, organize e-mails, run errands and the like. But no, 22-year-old journalists are not making assistant-hiring money. Mark (à la
Zuckerberg
) and Sam (à la
) are artificial intelligence agents, the newest brainchildren of
, respectively.
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In September Meta introduced Muse, an AI agent that can do a lot more than chat: it has its own “computer” and can make purchases, send e-mails and fill out forms for you—if you give it access.
A few weeks later, OpenAI answered with dots, its “always-on agents built to handle everything,” in the company’s words, for its highest-paying subscribers. Dots, too, can work more autonomously, and they do “proactive research” on your tasks even when you’re not using them.
Agent technology itself isn’t new or more advanced than other chatbots, says
Nikhil Singh
, a computer scientist at Dartmouth College. People have been building agents to help with all sorts of tasks for years, and earlier this year a free open-source agent called
OpenClaw
became a Silicon Valley obsession.