Sergey Diakov
⬤ Perplexity just dropped some eye-opening data on how people actually use AI in the real world. They teamed up with Harvard researchers to dig through hundreds of millions of anonymized interactions on their Comet and Comet Assistant platforms. This marks the first large-scale field study showing who's using AI agents, how often they're logging in, and what they're really doing with them.
⬤ Turns out, people start with light questions—travel ideas, entertainment stuff—but quickly pivot to serious work. More than one-third of all queries fall under productivity and workflow tasks like editing documents, managing forms, handling emails, working with spreadsheets, coding, and conducting research. Learning and research queries make up another 21%. The data shows users aren't just playing around—they're relying on AI for tasks that require actual thinking.
⬤ Different professions use AI differently. Digital tech workers lead adoption, followed by students and finance professionals. Students lean on AI for studying and research, finance users dig into analysis, and creative professionals focus on content production. A small cluster of professions accounts for a huge chunk of total usage, signaling that AI agents are becoming daily essentials for knowledge work.
⬤ The bigger picture here is clear: AI agents are evolving into thinking partners, not just task runners. As more organizations weave these systems into daily operations, Perplexity's findings point to fast-growing adoption in fields where reasoning, managing information, and analytical depth matter most.
Sergey Diakov
