Manus AI

Today I received an invite code for Manus AI.

This is another AI product launched by a Chinese start up and this time it is an AI agent. An AI agent is one which carries out a range of tasks given to it, independent of human intervention.

Manus tells me that it can do research and compile research reports, do data processing and data analysis, write in depth articles, reports and research papers with citations, create websites and web applications, help automate workflows and navigate websites and fill out forms.

It’s in beta mode now but they have already launched a commercial product at US $39 a month which can perform 2 tasks simultaneously.

So I downloaded it just now and to test it, I asked it to tell me about the usefulness of elections nowadays (this being the election season). In 8 minutes it did a 26.63 KB detailed paper on this.

Wow. With products like this very soon why would one need to spend time researching and writing articles anymore? You can just work on the draft provided by an AI agent and ask it to beef up areas that you think you want brushed up. Scary.

I do have to say that at his point in time, the Chinese are probably ahead in terms of trying to incorporate AI into their products for everyday use. All their big companies are vying to get AI into everything they do and sell. In the Western world you see AI products launched but no mass scale adoption yet. People hear all the hype about AI but so far it  has had no impact on ordinary people. Let’s see whether and when it happens.