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Following the release of his AI-powered browser Comet, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas sat down with the host of the “Decoder” podcast, Alex Heath, to discuss how artificial intelligence is changing the way people use the web, and how AI will be able to automate much of the work done by recruiters and personal assistants.
Srinivas believes that as reasoning AI models like GPT-5 or Claude 4.5 arrive, “a recruiter’s work worth one week is just one prompt: sourcing and reach outs” — a type of automation that can be enabled by a browser with the capabilities of an “AI agent.”
“What is an AI agent?” Srinivas said to Heath, “A rough description of what people want out of an AI agent is something that can actually go and do stuff for you. It’s very vague, obviously, just like how an AI chatbot is vague by definition. People just want it to respond to anything. The same is true for [AI] agents. It should be able to carry out any workflow end to end, from instruction to actual completion of the task.”
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Then he added: “Everything can live on the client side, everything can stay secure. It only accesses information that it needs to complete the task in the literal same way you access those websites yourself, so that way you get to understand what the agent is doing. It’s not like a black box. You get the full transparency and visibility.”
In the realm of recruitment, Srinivas describes a future where this type of automation will enable his AI browser to find specific candidates — such as Stanford-educated engineers who once worked at Anthropic — port their details into Google Sheets, and use services like Zoominfo to find emails for personalized outreach.
Although it’s still not possible, he is betting on progress in reasoning models to overcome these limitations, and allow the browser to function as your own personal supercomputer that handles complex projects simply by being told what to do.
Meanwhile, he believes that the current iteration of the Comet browser already offers “recruiting power that was never possible before,” even suggesting it is “better than using LinkedIn Premium” because AI can navigate complex filters and shortcuts that are difficult for humans to manage manually.
Beyond initial sourcing, Srinivas expects his new intelligent browser to handle “state tracking,” which involves the AI following up with candidates, updating statuses spreadsheets, and “syncing with my Google Calendar, and then resolve conflicts and schedule a chat.”
Srinivas views the web browser as the essential environment for this type of automation because it provides a secure, logged-in state for third-party apps that allows AI agents to act on a user’s behalf without constant re-authentication.
He argues that these assistant-like functions should eventually become proactive, running in the background like processes in an operating system rather than waiting for a specific prompt.
Regarding the broader impact of this automation, Srinivas anticipates a shift in how humans spend their time and how they value AI services. He suggests that as AI takes over repetitive tasks, people will have more time to spend either on entertainment or intellectual pursuits, launching “a bunch of Comet assistant jobs” in the background.
Economically, he believes users will pay usage-based pricing if the reliability of AI agents gets good enough. “You might not be part of the max subscription tier of $200 a month or anything, but there’s one task you really desperately want to get done and you don’t want to spend three hours doing that, and as long as the agent actually completes and you’re satisfied with the response rate, the success rate, you’ll be okay with trusting the [AI] agent to paying an advance fee of $20 for the recruiting task I described,” Srinivas said.
Ultimately, he sees this automation as a way to “map reduce your cognitive labor in bulk,” leading to a future where the browser is the primary tool for getting any task done.
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