A New Study from Harvard and Perplexity Finds AI Agents Perform 26 Minutes of Autonomous Work per Session vs 33 Seconds for Search

A new working research from Perplexity and Harvard offers field evidence on what AI agents do to knowledge work. It draws on production data from two Perplexity products: Search and Computer. The setup is a natural comparison. Search is a conversational answer engine. Computer is an agent that plans and executes tasks end to end. The same users touch both products, so the team can hold the task roughly constant. What the Study Actually Measures The research study covers a 90-day window