{"id":49115,"topic":"ai","source":"Harvard Business Review","title":"Research: How AI Agents Broaden the Scope of Knowledge Work - Harvard Business Review","url":"https://hbr.org/2026/07/research-how-ai-agents-broaden-the-scope-of-knowledge-work","url_hash":"25a13a1248f216ed2020f630ab37bca440e7eefd","author":"","summary":"<a href=\"https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiigFBVV95cUxNanF5ZWN3X2xVV2E1VUgwclg5bEduZjA0SldOS0hCVDNySmptTGVuRXdHYllRMFI4dmhZdi1SVW1hN2ZoeFh1VHBldlhsanRBVklQN2lPaGZuN0didE5TUDhQRXdNVGE1SC1QTjFsQ1lYRkI5X05CV3BDVzlMbUNxQktuWDV6YU1HSWc?oc=5\" target=\"_blank\">Research: How AI Agents Broaden the Scope of Knowledge Work</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;<font color=\"#6f6f6f\">Harvard Business Review</font>","content":"Summary.\nAI agents don’t just speed up knowledge work; they change its nature. In a field study of Perplexity’s conversational assistant and autonomous agent, researchers found that not onlyYou ask two different AI tools the same question—say, to pull together a comprehensive competitive landscape for a new product line. The first comes back in seconds with a tidy summary and a list of links. You read it, open a dozen tabs, copy numbers into a spreadsheet, build the chart, and write the memo yourself. The second comes back twenty-some minutes later with the spreadsheet built, the chart drawn, and a draft memo attached. One handed you information to act on. The other handed you completed work.","image_url":"/resources/images/article_assets/2026/07/Jul26_29_JasonFord.jpg","lang":"en","published_at":"2026-07-29T12:34:38+00:00","fetched_at":"2026-07-29T18:15:05+00:00","status":"read","starred":0,"extract_state":"ok","summary_auto":"AI agents don’t just speed up knowledge work; they change its nature. 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In a field study of Perplexity’s conversational assistant and autonomous agent, researchers found that not onlyYou ask two different AI tools the same question—say, to pull together a comprehensive competitive landscape for a new product line. The first comes back in seconds with a tidy summary and a list of links. You read it, open a dozen tabs, copy numbers into a spreadsheet, build the chart, and write the memo yourself. The second comes back twenty-some minutes later with the spreadsheet built, the chart drawn, and a draft memo attached. One handed you information to act on. The other handed you completed work.","excerpt":"AI agents don’t just speed up knowledge work; they change its nature. 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