Researchers from Harvard and Perplexity conducted the first large‑scale field study of how people use AI agents.
They analyzed hundreds of millions of anonymized user interactions in Comet to answer three questions: who’s using agents, how much, and what for.
https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/how-people-use-ai-agents
More than half of all agent activity focuses on cognitive work.
Agent use is dominated by Productivity & Workflow (36% of queries) and Learning & Research (21%). Users rely on the assistant to think through something, synthesize findings, and take action on those learnings.
Most agent queries come from personal use (55%), followed by professional (30%) and educational (16%) contexts.
New users often start with low-stakes questions like travel or trivia. Over time, they shift to more complex topics like productivity, learning, and career advice.
Digital technology leads in volume (30% of queries), but fields like Marketing, Sales, and Management show more “stickiness.”
Once these users adopt an agent, their usage intensity outpaces their adoption numbers as they integrate the assistant into their daily workflow.
The findings show that professionals use the Comet Assistant to solve specific friction points in their industry. Finance professionals prioritize efficiency, with 47% of their queries related to productivity. Meanwhile, students focus on utility, dedicating 43% of their queries to learning and research.
Read the full report: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.07828
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