AI agents are rewriting how we do business today

The smartphone is becoming your agent

By Liu Zuohu

For about two decades, the smartphone has largely served as a gateway to apps. When people wanted to do something, they opened an app and carried out a series of operations themselves. The rise of AI agents could change that relationship.

In the agent era, a user may only need to express an intention, and the phone could help turn it into a result.

The smartphone could shift from connecting people with apps to connecting people's intentions directly with outcomes.

The phone may be particularly well placed to become a personal agent because it is closest to the user. It has long-term memory, real-time context and connections to more devices and services. Its value may therefore lie less in being another piece of hardware and more in how well it understands the individual. The goal is to turn general-purpose AI into real personal intelligence.

The next step is more proactive intelligence. An assistant that knows a user's schedule, free time and interests could do more than respond to a request for a concert ticket. It could notice an opportunity, make a suggestion and help arrange it.

The agent would move from intention to execution, and eventually from waiting for a command to anticipating a need.

That shift also changes what a good operating system should do.

In the past, the task was to make the phone easier to use. For an agent operating system, the harder task is to make the system worthy of being entrusted with the user's affairs.

That requires two kinds of trust. The first is trust in capability: Can the agent understand what I want, and can it actually do the job? The second is trust in risk: As the agent becomes more autonomous, how can users retain meaningful control?

The answer will require precise authorization boundaries, traceability and cooperation across the broader ecosystem.

As agents begin to interact with other agents, they will need rules of behavior, much as people do in society.

The smartphone's next role may not be to help people use machines more efficiently.

It may be to make machines capable — and trustworthy enough — to act for people.

Liu Zuohu is the senior vice-president and chief product officer of OPPO and the founder and CEO of OnePlus. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.