Personal AI agents with enough context about a user's life will make a large share of consumer apps obsolete, since agents can act more contextually than any single app and don't require separate subscriptions.
Peter predicts that because personal agents have far more context about a user's life than any single app, most apps will become unnecessary or will be reduced to APIs the agent calls on the user's behalf. ✦ AI generated
Peter Steinberger · Lex Fridman · 2026-02-12 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 173:18
“Do you think agents will just transform the entire app market?”
It could show me UI just as I like. Why do I still need an app to do that? Why should I pay another subscription for something that the agent can just do now? ...that will translate into a whole category of apps that are no longer... I will just naturally stop using because my agent can just do it better.
verbatim transcript · starts at 173:18
173:18- Mm-hmm. - It could show me UI just as I like. Why do I still need an app to do that? Why do I have to ... Why should I pay another subscription for something that the agent can just do now? And why do I need my- my Eight Sleep app to control my bed when I can tell the a- ... tell the agent to ... You know, the agent already
173:41knows where I am, so he can, like, turn off what I don't use. - Mm-hmm. - And I think that will ... that will translate into a whole category of apps that are no longer ... I will just naturally stop using because my agent can just do it better. - I think you said somewhere that it might kill off 80% of apps. - Yeah. - Don't you think that's a gigantic transformative effect on
174:09just all software development? So that means it might kill off a lot of software companies. - Yeah. Um- - It's a scary thing. So, like, do you think about the impact that has on the economy? On, Just the ripple effects it has to society? Transforming who builds what tooling. It empowers a lot of users to get stuff done, to get stuff more efficiently, to get it done cheaper.
174:41- It's also new services that we will need, right? For example, I want my agent to have an allowance. Like, you solve problems for me, here's like 100 bucks in order to solve problems for me. And if I tell you to order me food, maybe it uses a service. Maybe it uses something like rent-a-human to, like, just get that done for me. - Mm-hmm. - I don't actually care. I care about solve my problem. There's space for-
175:13for new companies to solve that well. Maybe don't ... Not all apps disappear. Maybe some transform into being API. - So, basically, apps that rapidly transform in being agent-facing. So, there's a real opportunity for, like, Uber Eats, that we just used earlier today. It- it's companies this, of which there's many. Who gets there fastest to being able to interact with OpenClaw in a way that's the m- the most natural, the easiest?