The rise of the tireless digital intern Every company knows the intern archetype: sharp, eager, a little green, and great at the busywork that keeps the engine running—research bundles, first drafts, data cleanups, checklist chores. Now, AI agents are stepping into that role across the digital economy. They draft emails, reconcile reports, chase down missing CRM fields, distill 50-page PDFs, and stitch steps across tools people already use. Done right, they don’t replace judgment—they buy it time. Think of an agent as more than a chatbot. It’s a stack: a model that plans multi-step work, a set of tools it’s authorized to use, a memory of what happened last time, and a feedback loop for quality. With bigger context windows, stronger tool use, and cheaper inference, that stack has crossed a threshold. The experience now feels less like typing into a box and more like onboarding a junior colleague. What changed under the hood Three shifts brought agents into the workplace: Reliable tool u...