Skills, Memory, Collaboration: What's Next for Al Agents with Zora Wang | AM Podcast #6

Zora Wang is a CS PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University. Zora’s work lies at the intersection of coding agents and human-ai collaboration.  In this episode we explore how agents work, how humans work, and how we can get more done together.

Outline:

0:00 - Introduction

4:57 - Agent Workflow Memory

9:26 - From Program Synthesis to Agent Research

11:16 - Tools, Actions, and Skills

18:47 - Human Work vs. Agent Work

21:19 - Autonomous Agents vs. Collaborative Agents

29:47 - Picking Research Problems in the Age of AI Agents

34:09 - The Role of Coding Ability in Agent Development

36:49 - Cutting Through the Fear Mongering: Building Agents Responsibly

45:02 - What’s Next? (The Future of Human-Agent Collaboration)

52:42 - Final Takeaway

References:

Zora’s Homepage: https://zorazrw.github.io/ 

Agent Workflow Memory: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.07429 

How Do AI Agents Do Human Work? Comparing AI and Human Workflows Across Diverse Occupations: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.22780 

Podcast Links:

Podcast website: https://augmented-mind.github.io/

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/augmented-mind-podcast/id1868102170

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/40KculkYTe2tOpqJm6TAYr?si=PU_UncsMT4mXjVNCRwoXog&nd=1&dlsi=6d9bed7a43d64085

RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/10dbf5b7c/podcast/rss

About the Hosts:

The AM Podcast is hosted by Yijia Shao, Shannon Shen, and Michael Ryan, CS PhD students at Stanford University and MIT.