Modern life comes with an unending, auto-populating to-do list.
It never ceases to amaze me how I can be doing nothing at all, minding my own business, and suddenly something needs to be taken care of. You’re telling me a tree branch fell in the backyard and now I have to figure out what to do with it? The tree just assigned me homework? Oh, our trash collection company canceled our account out of nowhere and now I have to send email about it? Repeatedly? Totally unfair.
These are the things that we’ve been told for years that AI will help us with. We’ll all have a smart virtual assistant to triage and handle the tedious tasks we’d rather not face. If you believe Meta, that future is available right now in the form of Muse, its AI agent for the masses. I put it to the test doing exactly what it’s advertised to do: taking care of tedious crap I’ve been putting off for ages. And it worked better than I expected — especially when there was a credit card transaction to be made.
It was dizzying watching Marley spin up virtual browser windows chasing down my requests
Marley — one of the suggested names you can give Muse’s avatar — had been pinging me all of last week. It wanted me to know all the ways it could be useful; I was too busy to engage with it. But I sat down with it this week and set it to work on a task. And while it worked on that task, I gave it another. Then another. The thing about AI agents is that they’re most useful when you use them in parallel with each other. Or that’s the theory I was working on. In reality, it was dizzying watching Marley spin up virtual browser windows chasing down my requests. I went with a generically cute snowman-meets-puppy avatar that Meta suggested at setup, and Marley tapped cheerfully on a keyboard as it worked its way through my commands.
In the span of a morning, I gave it the following tasks to help me out with. None of them were critical; mostly they were the kinds of pebble-in-your-shoe annoyances I’d put off for weeks, months, or maybe years. Here’s how it went.
Task: Follow up with the landscaper working on a bid for our backyard renovation
Effort rating: Extremely low
Time I have been putting it off: Two weeks
Was Marley able to complete it? Yes
I asked Marley to help me nudge the person I’ve been emailing at a local landscaping company. I’m expecting them to price out some yard renovations for us, so Marley requested access to my Gmail to check on the status of that project. It confirmed that more time had passed than the landscaper initially estimated the bid would take, and drafted a rather snippy but wordy email. “Make it shorter,” I said. To be clear: As a rule, I do not use AI writing tools. Definitely not in my work, and not even for email. What’s the point? Just don’t send email if you’re going to have a robot write it. In fact, I think we should abolish email. Anyway, I broke my own rule for testing purposes; hitting send on that message made me cringe.
Task: Buy a replacement steam wand assembly for my espresso machine
Effort rating: Low
Time I have been putting it off: [redacted] years
Was Marley able to complete it? Mostly
My Breville Barista Express has held up spectacularly for six years and counting, but it isn’t immune from user error. I took the steam wand apart to clean it a few years back and tore the little silicone washer that goes inside of it. Instead of ordering a new one, I just shoved it back into place and screwed the thing back together. It works okay, but every few months when I’m cleaning the machine it nags at my conscience. It’s probably why the hot water dispenser drips sometimes when I run the steam, too. Ordering a new steam wand assembly costs like 7 bucks and is as difficult as entering my credit card number on Breville’s website. Naturally, I put it off for an unreasonable amount of time.
I opened up my chat with Marley and told it what I needed; it found the part and added it to a shopping cart. I had to finish up the order myself, but it’s done and the part will be here in five to seven business days.
Task: Downgrade my security system account to the cheaper one
Effort rating: Medium (requires a phone call)
Time I have been putting it off: A year? Two years???
Was Marley able to complete it? Not fully
I approved Marley to log into my account, which also required me to verify my email. While I was making the trip to my inbox I saw I had a follow-up to my follow-up with the landscaper. He was apologetic for the delay and I felt a little bad about the slightly abrupt tone of the email Marley sent. I wrote a friendlier reply the old-fashioned way.
With access to my account, Marley reported back what I already knew: You have to call the company to change your plan. Muse wasn’t able to make a phone call for me, though apparently that ability is in the works. This seems like the logical next frontier for these AI agents, and also a weird future to consider. I call the company and answer a few questions from their robot before I’m routed to a human. No doubt there’s a future soon where Marley talks to the security company’s robot before any human being enters the chat. Or more likely in the short term, a human in a call center talks to the other company’s robot before eventually getting to another human in a call center, which feels even weirder. But surely the end state is that my robot will just talk to their robot and they’ll do business without any intervention at all. Anyway, a nice guy answered and made the change to my account. I think he was real.
Task: Contact a junk removal company to get rid of a fallen tree branch in the backyard
Effort rating: Medium
Time I have been putting it off: A week
Was Marley able to complete it? Mostly
The tree branch is a real problem I need to deal with. It didn’t do any damage, but it’s big enough that it’ll either take an afternoon to hack apart and haul to the dump or requires a visit from a junk removal service. Marley was most useful here — it set off looking through listings for hauling services and highlighted a few in the area. It asked for my address, phone number, and a photo of the tree limb, and used that information to put together requests for quotes from a couple of companies using online form submissions. I got a text back from one company not long after, and confirmed a time the following day for tree limb removal. Very little was required on my part, and assuming the tree branch is gone by this time tomorrow, I’ll consider this mission accomplished for Muse.
Task: Shop for camping kitchen gear, either as a set or assembled piece by piece
Effort rating: Medium
Time I have been putting it off: A few days
Was Marley able to complete it? Yes
If our wallets were already defenseless in the era of one-click checkout, we’re so cooked when AI agent shopping truly arrives. I gave Marley some requirements for my outdoor cooking setup and it set out finding the necessary items. It made an attempt to access Amazon and was roundly blocked, complete with a spicy message about AI agents violating terms of service. Anyway, it found what I was looking for between OXO’s own website and Walmart.
While I was at it, I wanted to add a propane fire pit to the mix. Not for cooking — for ambience and marshmallows. I’d borrowed a couple of different kinds from friends, and after weighing the pros and cons of each with Muse I landed on a LavaBox and a handy carrying case. The grand total for my camp kitchen and burn-ban-safe fire pit: $500! I told Muse we’d have to pump the brakes and spread these purchases out over the winter. It obliged and helped me prioritize what would make sense to buy first and what was likely to go on sale toward the holidays.
In the meantime, I had Marley find and purchase some other espresso machine supplies. I had to connect my credit card via Stripe, but after I’d done that once it became dangerously easy to tell Marley “Go for it” and approve whatever it had just put in my shopping cart. I watched it fill in my address details in the virtual browser window and confirmation emails started filing into my inbox. Marley did a little shopping around to find slightly better prices, and I didn’t buy anything egregious — just some descaling powder and water filters. It also did the math to calculate whether powdered Dezcal would be a better value than the liquid stuff (way better, not surprisingly). But it is shockingly easy to spend money when a cute little guy is running around the internet with your credit card.
It is shockingly easy to spend money when a cute little guy is running around the internet with your credit card
There’s a danger in overcommitting yourself when you feel like these AI tools are speeding you up. In a few cases, Muse helped me get started by putting the details I needed in front of my face. I had the phone number for the home security company at hand, as well as the name of my current plan and the one I wanted to downgrade to. Getting that little speed bump out of the way was what I needed, I guess. But the dirty secret of productivity hacks is that doing more stuff often doesn’t feel like things are being removed from your plate; somehow it just invites more tasks.
If you’re willing to give a lot of information and trust to Meta — a massive caveat! — Muse can genuinely help you get things done. I’d been using it for all of 40 minutes and already given it my full name, address, credit card number, a photo of my backyard, and the credentials for my home security account login. Going great, I’d say! If AI decides to kill us all I just secured my spot at the front of the line. Meta of course says that all of these details are stored securely, Marley allegedly can’t even see them, etc., but still. Unsettling.
But I think the underlying question we need to ask ourselves as we enter the era of AI agents is what we do with the time we’re supposedly freeing up. Will we use it to take on more commitments? And then ultimately feel overwhelmed again when the to-do list keeps piling up? After a morning crossing items off my list with Marley, I didn’t spend the hours that followed doing anything consequential. In fact, I spent that time chatting with Marley, seeking reassurance about the direction of the yard project and brainstorming fall camping trips I probably won’t take. It’s a gorgeous day outside, the kind we really can’t take for granted in late September, and I wish I’d spent that time outdoors rather than inside talking to a robot, cute little guy or otherwise.
Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge