I’m kind of sick about posting about AI so much, but I did want to point out something with another new thing. This video is for Manus “a general AI agent that bridges minds and actions: it doesn’t just think, it delivers results.” Apparently, you can just leave it to do things for you. Except, erm, you can’t.

Here’s the promo video:

Notice that the three examples are essentially about ranking, whether that’s people, property, or stocks. Also, are all of the fake job applicants it shows male? As TechCrunch found, doing something else which probably should be pretty straightforward, causes some showstopping problems.

“Glimpses of AGI,” indeed 🙄

I asked the platform to handle what seemed to me like a pretty straightforward request: order a fried chicken sandwich from a top-rated fast food joint in my delivery range. After about 10 minutes, Manus crashed. On the second attempt, it found a menu item that met my criteria, but Manus couldn’t complete the ordering process — or provide a checkout link, even.

Manus similarly whiffed when I asked it to book a flight from NYC to Japan. Given instructions that I thought didn’t leave much room for ambiguity (e.g. “look for a business-class flight, prioritizing price and flexible dates”), the best Manus could do was serve up links to fares across several airline websites and airfare search engines like Kayak, some of which were broken.

Screenshot of Manus.ai struggling to order fried chicken sandwiches

Hoping the next few tasks might be the charm, I told Manus to reserve a table for one at a restaurant within walking distance. It failed after a few minutes. Then I asked the platform to build a Naruto-inspired fighting game. It errored out half an hour in, which is when I decided to throw in the towel.

Source and image: TechCrunch