Harvard and Perplexity Study: AI agents cut task time by 87% and costs by 94%

Harvard and Perplexity released a study using 10,000 real work tasks. They compared Perplexity's Search (a chat tool) and Computer (an AI agent that can plan and use tools). The agent worked 48 times longer per session (26 minutes vs 33 seconds), but user complaints were lower (1.3% vs 2.9%). For the same tasks, the agent plus human took 36 minutes, 87% less than Search plus human (269 minutes). Total costs dropped 94%, even though the agent cost more per task ($4-10 vs $0.05), because human work cost fell from $2.05 to $0.16 per step. The study says simple questions are still good for chat, but complex, multi-step work is better for agents.