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Why Johnny Can't Use Agents: Industry Aspirations vs. User Realities with AI Agent Software
Pradyumna Shome, Sashreek Krishnan, Sauvik Das
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14528 h…

Why Johnny Can't Use Agents: Industry Aspirations vs. User Realities with AI Agent Software
There is growing imprecision about what "AI agents" are, what they can do, and how effectively they can be used by their intended users. We pose two key research questions: (i) How does the tech industry conceive of and market "AI agents"? (ii) What challenges do end-users face when attempting to use commercial AI agents for their advertised uses? We first performed a systematic review of marketed use cases for 102 commercial AI agents, finding that they fall into three umbrella categories: orc…