S3 Bonus 1: Bret Taylor of Sierra and OpenAI
Economist Podcasts
The Economist
4.3 • 5K Ratings
🗓️ 29 January 2026
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A conversation about the potential and limits of AI agents with the co-founder of Sierra, an agentic customer-service company. Bret Taylor, who is also the chairman of OpenAI, tells Andrew Palmer about the imperfections of the technology, the competition between model-makers and vendors, and how he uses AI to manage.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Economist. |
| 0:09.3 | Hi there. I'm the Sonos AI support agent. You can talk to me just like you would with anyone else. |
| 0:15.3 | Oh, hi. Did you say you were an AI? |
| 0:18.2 | Yes. I'm an AI powered assistant here to help you with anything. |
| 0:22.6 | Phonos related. |
| 0:23.6 | I've borrowed a colleague Sonos wireless speaker as an excuse to call up its customer support line, |
| 0:29.6 | because I know it won't be a human that answers the phone. |
| 0:33.6 | Yeah, no, I'm looking for help. |
| 0:35.6 | So I've brought my speaker into the office today, and I'd like to connect it to the office Wi-Fi, and I'm having difficulties. So can you help? |
| 0:45.7 | Are you seeing any specific errors in the photos app? No. |
| 0:50.2 | Okay, give me a moment here. |
| 0:52.7 | AI customer support agents like this one are spreading fast. |
| 0:57.0 | It's not perfect. We talk over each other a lot. |
| 1:01.0 | But the agent sounds natural and is able to respond to any question I throw at it, however irrelevant. |
| 1:08.0 | What's your favorite music? |
| 1:10.0 | Oh, good question. |
| 1:11.6 | I'm thinking about that for a sec. |
| 1:13.7 | I don't have personal favorites, |
| 1:15.3 | but I can help you play anything you like once your son-nose one is set up. |
| 1:19.2 | If you want to keep troubleshooting, just let me know. |
| 1:22.0 | It's clearly been trained to stay on task. |
| 1:24.7 | What kind of personality have you been prompted to have? |
... |
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