硅谷长期以来一直梦想着打造出一种功能强大且使用起来极其直观的数字助手，能够帮助用户摆脱那些耗费大量时间和精力的繁琐个人事务。在影视作品中，比如《钢铁侠》系列中的 J.A.R.V.I.S.（Just a Rather Very Intelligent System），这类数字助手为人们树立了极高的期望。2010 年，苹果公司收购了 Siri——这款数字助手的实际表现却令人失望至极。
Silicon Valley has long dreamed of building a digital assistant capable and intuitive enough to rid users of many of the tedious personal tasks that gobble up time and attention. Fictional representations, such as J.A.R.V.I.S. (Just a Rather Very Intelligent System) in the “Iron Man” films, set expectations high. In 2010 Apple, the iPhone-maker, acquired Siri, one such aide. It turned out to be disappointingly moronic.
如今，在人工智能领域新一轮投资的热潮下，个人智能助手的时代或许终于到来了。在过去两个月里，社交媒体巨头 Meta 和初创公司 Instinct 分别推出了两款这样的数字助手。用户可以通过苹果的 iMessage 或 Meta 的 WhatsApp 与这些助手进行交互；这些助手能够帮助用户预订航班、查找售罄的音乐会门票、安排与朋友的晚餐等。
Now, amid the current wave of investment in artificial intelligence, the era of personal AI agents may at last have arrived. In the past two months Meta, a social-media giant, and Instinct, a startup, have released two such bots to great fanfare. Instinct, which users contact through Apple’s iMessage service or Meta’s WhatsApp, is already checking users into flights, hunting down sold-out concert tickets and arranging dinners with friends, among much else. (Your correspondent uses it to update his calendar with earnings calls as they are announced.)
我的记者就使用 Instinct 来实时更新自己的日历（每当公司发布财报时，系统会自动将相关信息添加到日历中）。Meta 的另一款助手 Muse 也具备类似的功能，用户可以通过 WhatsApp、网页浏览器或移动应用程序来使用它；从今年晚些时候开始，用户还可以通过 Meta 的智能眼镜来使用这款助手。
Muse, Meta’s assistant, has similar capabilities, but can be accessed through WhatsApp, a web browser, a mobile app—or, from later this year, the company’s smart glasses.
投资者兼博主 M.G. Siegler 解释说，新一代数字助手与早期产品的主要区别在于：它们能够主动为用户提供帮助，而不仅仅是响应用户的明确指令。这家初创公司的创始人 Noah Shinn（24 岁）表示：“Instinct 的运作方式正是我们所有人期望人工智能应该具备的。”
The big difference from earlier generations of digital assistants, explains M.G. Siegler, an investor and blogger, is that these new bots can work proactively, rather than reacting only to what users explicitly ask for. Instinct “really just works in the way I believe we all want AI to act”, says Noah Shinn, the startup’s 24-year-old founder.
这些数字助手的普及速度非常快；Noah Shinn 认为：“在未来几年内，世界上每一个拥有互联网连接的用户都将能够使用到类似 Instinct 的产品。”这一预测很可能会成为现实。不过在此之前，开发这些数字助手的公司还需要克服许多障碍才能实现更广泛的普及——其中包括安全性和可靠性的问题，以及一些大型企业对于允许这些工具与自身系统交互的抵触情绪。
Uptake is soaring, so much so that Mr Shinn reckons “in a few years every user in the world that has an internet connection is going to have access to a product like Instinct.”That may well prove true. Before then, however, the companies developing personal agents will have to overcome a variety of hurdles to more widespread adoption, including concerns over security and reliability and the reluctance of some big businesses to allow the tools to interact with their systems.
Instinct和Meta在吸引用户方面采取了截然不同的方法，但迄今为止两者都取得了巨大成功。就Instinct而言，用户必须受朋友邀请，或由公司从候补名单中挑选。即便如此，用户数量仍每天增长约10%。简单性让他们不断回归：据该公司称，约有一半注册Instinct的人在第一个月后仍至少每周使用一次。向代理下达指令就像写一条短信一样简单；随后它会回复进度更新。
Instinct and Meta have pursued very different approaches to attracting users, but both have been wildly successful so far. In Instinct’s case, users must be invited by a friend or hand-picked by the company from a waitlist. Even so, the number of users has been growing by about 10% daily. Simplicity keeps them coming back: around half of people who have signed up to Instinct continue using it at least once a week after the first month, according to the company. Giving the agent an instruction is as simple as writing a short text; it will then reply with updates on its progress.
如果说Instinct是天鹅绒绳索后的私人派对，那么Muse就是任何人都能参加的开放式狂欢（只要他们住在美国或加拿大）。据各方报道，派对场面火爆——而且人们也流连忘返。据数据提供商Sensor Tower称，自Muse上市以来不到一个月，已有超过1000万人下载了该应用。OpenAI引发AI热潮的热门聊天机器人ChatGPT，在其网页版首次亮相几个月后推出移动应用，同期内移动应用下载量仅为370万次。Muse留住用户的比率也与ChatGPT大致相同。
If Instinct is the private party taking place behind a velvet rope, Muse is the open-invite rave anyone can partake in (so long as they live in America or Canada). By all accounts, the party is heaving—and people are lingering, too. More than 10m people have downloaded the Muse app since its debut a little over a month ago, according to Sensor Tower, a data provider. ChatGPT, the hit chatbot from OpenAI that precipitated the AI boom, had only 3.7m downloads of its mobile app in the same timeframe after its release, a few months after the web version was first unveiled. Muse is retaining users at about the same rates as ChatGPT, too.
然而，说服派对参与者暴露他们的数据并不总是容易。个人代理需要私人信息才能发挥潜力：如果没有日历或信用卡的访问权限，它们不过是一个花哨的聊天机器人。科技圈有些人担心，这些机器人会让用户面临新的威胁，例如提示注入，即攻击者通过网站的计算机代码向AI偷偷发送文本，诱使其行为失当。
Persuading partygoers to expose their data, however, is not always easy. Personal agents need private information to reach their potential: without access to a calendar or a credit card they are little more than a glorified chatbot. Some in techland fear that the bots will leave users vulnerable to new threats such as prompt injections, where an attacker sneaks text to an AI through a website’s computer code and deceives it into misbehaving.
这些公司似乎正严肃对待这些担忧。Meta 为每位 Muse 用户分配一台私有计算机，用于存放其数据并运行其助手。它还训练 Muse 掌握多种抵御提示词注入的方法，尽管一些安全研究人员认为它仍易受恶意指令影响。Instinct 向公众披露的网络安全措施较少，但辛恩表示，该服务的设计原则是用户“应始终掌控自己的数据”。
The companies seem to be taking these concerns seriously. Meta assigns a private computer for each Muse user to hold their data and operate their assistant. It has also taught Muse various ways to resist prompt injections, though some security researchers reckon it remains susceptible to malicious instructions. Instinct has revealed less to the public about its cyber-security measures, but Mr Shinn says the service is designed around the principle that users “should always be in control of their data”.
除此之外，还担心个人代理可能因纯粹的“愚蠢”而酿成大祸。Meta 承认 Muse 会犯错，并已设置多项护栏以在其犯错时将潜在损害降至最低。即便如此，一些用户可能仍会因顾虑而不愿交出信用卡详细信息，直到他们确信代理能妥善处理这些信息。
On top of that are concerns that personal agents could wreak havoc out of sheer stupidity. Meta has admitted that Muse will make mistakes, and has put a number of guardrails in place to minimise the potential damage when it does. Even so, some users may baulk at handing over their credit-card details until they are confident their agent will handle them wisely.
长期接触似乎能建立这种信任。据该公司称，约 40% 的 Instinct 用户会在三周内绑定信用卡。Instinct 和 Meta 还与支付公司 Stripe 合作，提供一种数字钱包，让用户无需直接交出银行详细信息即可完成购买，这可能会让一些用户感到宽慰。
Prolonged exposure appears to build that trust. About 40% of Instinct users connect a credit card within three weeks, according to the company. Instinct and Meta also work with Stripe, a payments company, to offer a digital wallet that allows users to make purchases without handing over their banking details directly, which may reassure some.
机器人构建者面临的另一大挑战是说服其他企业欢迎其代理。一些企业似乎乐意配合。电商软件平台 Shopify 正致力于让 Instinct 和 Muse 更容易从其供应商网络采购。Meta 也在与美国最大零售商沃尔玛、杂货配送服务 Instacart 以及旅游预订网站 Expedia 合作。
The other big challenge for bot-builders is to persuade other businesses to welcome their agents. Some appear happy to do so. Shopify, a software platform for e-commerce businesses, is working to make it easier for Instinct and Muse to buy from its network of vendors. Meta is also working with Walmart, America’s biggest retailer; Instacart, a grocery-delivery service; and Expedia, a travel-booking site.
但其他公司仍持怀疑态度。例如，亚马逊目前对 Instinct 和 Muse 都关闭大门。这家电商巨头的很大一部分利润来自向用户展示广告，目前几乎不需要个人代理可能带来的额外流量。亚马逊还抱怨 Meta 未提前告知 Muse 的发布。
But other companies remain unconvinced. Amazon, for instance, is currently off limits to both Instinct and Muse. The e-emporium generates a good chunk of its profit from showing users ads, and currently has little need for the extra traffic that might come its way via personal agents. Amazon has also complained that Meta failed to give it a heads up about Muse’s release.
一些硅谷老板表示，他们在等待观察技术如何发展，然后再决定是否向个人代理开放系统。与此同时，代理构建者们正忙着争取这些公司。辛恩以订餐公司为例，Instinct 通过同意防止其代理大量预订后只保留一单、取消其余订单，赢得了其中一些公司的青睐。即使是亚马逊首席执行官安迪·贾西，似乎也在对未来保持开放态度，他在最近一次财报电话会上表示，他“非常希望”公司最终能达成一项公平协议，解除对代理的禁令。
Some Silicon Valley bosses say that they are waiting to see how the technology develops before opening their systems to personal agents. In the meantime, the bot-builders are busily trying to win them over. Mr Shinn gives the example of restaurant-booking companies, some of which Instinct has won over by agreeing to prevent its agents from booking vast numbers of reservations, only to cancel all but one. Even Andy Jassy, Amazon’s boss, appears to be keeping an open mind about the future, saying on a recent earnings call he is “very hopeful” his company will eventually reach a fair deal that lifts the ban on agents.
如果个人代理要成为一门可行的生意，此类协议将是必要的。扎克伯格表示，他设想 Muse 将通过订阅费和从促成的交易中抽成相结合的方式盈利。辛恩认为，最终大多数在线消费都将通过个人代理流向。
Such agreements will be necessary if personal agents are to become a viable business. Mr Zuckerberg has said that he envisages Muse will earn its keep from a combination of subscriptions and a cut of the transactions it facilitates. Mr Shinn reckons that most online spending will eventually flow through personal agents.
哪家代理构建者能赢得最大份额目前仍未定。据数据提供商 PitchBook 统计，Instinct 迄今已融资 14 亿美元。对于一家成立一年的初创公司来说，这是一笔可观的资金，但与 Meta 可调动的资源相比只是九牛一毛。OpenAI 和 Gemini 模型的制造商谷歌都提供自己的个人代理。尽管这些代理目前更多面向企业而非消费者用户，但它们未来可能扩大关注范围。想要打造涵盖各类体验的一站式平台的短租平台 Airbnb 也表示，计划明年推出个人代理。
Which bot-builder wins the biggest share of the business is still up for grabs. Instinct has raised $1.4bn to date, according to PitchBook, a data provider. That is a tidy sum for a one-year-old startup, but a pittance compared to what Meta has at its disposal. OpenAI and Google, maker of the Gemini models, both offer their own personal agents. Although these are currently pitched more for business than consumer use, they could expand their focus. Airbnb, a short-term rental platform that wants to make itself into a one-stop-shop for all manner of experiences, has also said that it plans to launch a personal agent next year.
还有苹果公司，它在6月给Siri进行了大改版。尽管新版助手普遍被视为比其那个“毫无头脑”的前身有所改进，但它缺乏目前正赢得消费者青睐的个人智能体的大多数自主能力。或许这家iPhone制造商应该考虑给Instinct发条信息。■
Then there is Apple, which in June gave Siri a big makeover. Although the new assistant is widely viewed as an improvement on its brainless predecessor, it lacks most of the autonomous capabilities of the personal agents that are now winning over consumers. Perhaps the iPhone-maker should consider messaging Instinct. ■