AI Agent Insider Edition #002 - Smarter Voice Assistants Coming + Practical Ways to Use Zapier's AI-powered Task Automation, and more

Hey, it’s Matt.
Welcome to AI Agent Insider!

If you’re reading this, then hopefully that means your tech devices and local power grid survived the solar storms last night. ☀️ 🦾

If your Aurora experience wasn’t all smiles and sunshine, then I am sorry.

On the bright side, there is a lot to catch up on in the world of AI agent and assistant news and tutorials, so let’s dive right in!

-MM

In today’s issue:

• AI MEME OF THE WEEK

• AI AGENT TWEET OF THE WEEK

• THE RESOURCE ROUNDUP:

  • State of voice AI Assistants: Are the “smarter Siri” rumors true? Has GenAI made Alexa smarter already?

  • A Review of This Week’s Zapier AI Showcase: The Good, the bad, the promising — plus all the relevant tutorials you need to dive in!

  • Introducing The AI Upskilling Framework by LinkedIn and why I love it

• ALSO, ICYMI: LLMs recently trained a robo dog to balance itself perfectly on an exercise ball… 😬🤯 sooo.. gravity’s conquered. What’s next?
  (great explainer video here)

First time reading? Sign up here.

MEME OF THE WEEK
Speaking of Solar Flares…

AI AGENT TWEET OF THE WEEK
Notion power user like me? Check this out!

Even though this tweet isn’t from this week, Dan Shipper’s demo of the Notion GPT he built was showcased in Zapier’s AI Automation Showcase that happened this week (Dan’s demo starts at the 27:13 min mark). And it was awesome.

Got me excited about the possibilities and now I’m working on building out my own AI Action test cases now. If you’re interested in doing the same, start here and here for Zapier tutorials and documentation.

BEST LINKS THIS WEEK
AI Agent & Assistant News
(Top 3 picks)

• From Mediocre to Must-use: Are AI Voice Assistants Improving?

  Yes. At least, that is the word on the street. This week, The Verge wrote an excellent article reporting how Siri is poised for an LLM-powered upgrade, as part of the iOS 18 release this September. Safari may also be on track for a Gen AI-infused upgrade as well, according to MacRumors, with the addition of a “smart browsing assistant.”
  
  I guess we all should have seen this coming. I think about it every time I set a timer with Siri or ask the weather (which are about the only reliable use cases for Siri since it first shipped). Alexa appears to be ahead right now on the LLM-powered voice assistant frontier, having already rolled out developer tools within AWS for incorporating LLMs into Alexa voice experiences.

• What you missed at this week’s Zapier AI Showcase 
  (plus how to sign up for part II, the build-along tutorial session!)
  This past Wednesday, Zapier hosted a webinar called “Demo showcase: Unleash your automation superpowers”. And demo showcase it was! 9 demos, back-to-back.
  
  Based on the comments, some attendees were totally overwhelmed (understandably) and others loved it. Regardless of the demo quality and delivery, one thing was clear: there are some seriously powerful agentic workflows that can be created TODAY within Zapier and Zapier Central.
  
  You can watch Part 1 here if you’d like to see the end-to-end session, from demos to Q&A at the end. If you’d like to join me in attending part II, the build-along tutorial session, you can sign up here.
   
  Also, to save you time, here are all of the tutorials that the Zapier team linked to along the way, to help attendees learn how to recreate the AI-powered Zapier workflows being demoed:

  • Zapier Copilot: Let AI build Zaps for you

  • Zapier Central: Teach AI bots to work across your favorite apps

  • How to create a planning bot with Zapier Central

  • How to use AI to automatically extract data from emails

  • Automate lead collection and scale support with Chatbots

  • How a small gardening business automates invoicing and expenses with AI

  • A list of all AI apps currently available in Zapier

• Introducing The AI Upskilling Framework

LinkedIn has unveiled an exciting new framework for AI upskilling, aimed at enhancing skills and capabilities in the AI domain. The framework's first three, foundational layers —Understanding, Applying, and Building —align perfectly with the mission of AI Agent Insider, so naturally I’m fired up about this.

For those eager to dive deeper, the framework points to a comprehensive Learning Path that can significantly boost your skills working with OpenAI’s APIs to build agentic workflows. Of particular interest is the OpenAI API: Building Assistants course, which I will be exploring myself this month. A premium subscription to LinkedIn that gives you access to LinkedIn Learning is required to access the learning path and courses (definitely worth it though if you can swing it financially).

Noteworthy Tutorials
(Top 2 picks)

• RAG is all the RAGE: Need a Primer?

  Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) has quickly become essential understanding for Enterprise deployments of generative AI. While I’m sure some of you are already fairly knowledgeable or even true experts on this topic, I think there’s likely a lot of us - myself included - that aren’t “expert” level yet. And even if you’re like, WTF is RAG? — that’s okay.

  
  Here’s a great primer to help us all on our RAG learning journey.

• Build Your RAG Skills with DeepLearning.AI’s New Course

  Dive into the world of AI with "Building Agentic RAG with LlamaIndex," a new FREE course by DeepLearning.AI designed for those with basic Python knowledge. This course teaches you how to build intelligent agents that can autonomously analyze and interact with their documents.
  
  While I haven’t taken this course yet, I’m confident based on the course creators that it will offer practical experience in creating agents that reason and learn from their data.

  
  Explore the course and enroll here.

AI Agent Tools: Pick of the Week

Zapier Central

Currently available in a public preview, Zapier Central is gonna be a game-changer for anyone looking to build powerful AI assistants quickly across many different use cases.

How it works:

This AI-powered platform enables users to create and deploy bots that automate tasks across over 6,000 apps without a single line of code. What sets Zapier Central apart is its ability to perform tasks autonomously, integrating live data and executing actions as needed, all within a user-friendly chat interface.

Why it’s worth your time:

Based on demos from the Zapier AI Showcase (see above), as well as my testing of it thus far, Zapier Central clearly has potential to boost productivity through automation of repetitive tasks and streamlining data operations, with an ease of use that sets it apart from alternative options. It’s one of the simplest ways to incorporate your favorite LLM into a given workflow - especially since AI can build your zaps for your now - which is exciting and helps you move faster due to the lower learning curve!

I’m bullish that for most users, who are less technical, AI workspace tools like Zapier Central are going to be the best means to accelerate adoption of innovative workflow automations made possible by state-of-the-art LLMs.

• https://zapier.com/central

• Link to Zapier’s Help Center Docs for Central

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THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE UGLY…
Bueno? Meh? Feedback Welcome!

If you took the time read to this section, that means a lot to me.

Seriously, if there’s anything in particular you would like for me to cover in my next editions, please reply to this email and let know.
 👇 🙏