A new Harvard × Perplexity research measures AI agents on production data, not a benchmark. The research study compares Perplexity Search and Computer on near-identical queries from the same users (cosine similarity > 0.99). and Yes, the agent is faster... Three things stood out: 1. Autonomy is now measured in machine time 2. The time and cost savings are large but expected 3. The part most people will miss: scope, not speed Full analysis: https://www.marktechpost.com/2026/06/08/a-new-study-from-harvard-and-perplexity-finds-ai-agents-perform-26-minutes-of-autonomous-work-per-session-vs-33-seconds-for-search/ Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2606.07489