Should You Use an AI Browser? Risk Assessment

Discussion on privacy tradeoffs and deciding whether agent browsers fit individual security appetites.

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Today’s Episode

ChatGPT just made huge waves with its Atlas browser. Perplexity made waves before that with its Comet browser. And Atlassian just spent a billion dollars to buy Dia.

Big companies are making big moves in the AI browser space.

But should you use an AI browser? Is it safe? Will it make you more effective as a PM?

I asked this question at Berkeley last month during my keynote. Out of 500 PMs in the room, literally two hands went up.

That needs to change.

Naman Pandey has tested these browsers more extensively than anyone else. He runs the Ready Set Do podcast and has spent hundreds of hours finding the real use cases that actually work.

Today, we’re putting all three browsers head-to-head. Same prompts. Same tasks. Live demos.

You’ll see which browser wins for each use case, where they fall over, and the exact workflows to use them as a PM.

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Check out the conversation on Apple, Spotify and YouTube.

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Key Takeaways:

1. AI agent browsers are underhyped for PMs - Only 2 out of 500 PMs at Berkeley were using them. If you're doing web research, competitor analysis, or data scraping, you're leaving hours on the table every week.

2. The three browsers serve different purposes - ChatGPT Atlas for deep research across multiple pages. Perplexity Comet for real-time quick lookups. Arc Dia for workflow automation. They're not competing head-to-head.

3. Atlas dominates data extraction - Scrape YC companies, find recruiters on LinkedIn, build competitor comparison tables. What took 2-3 hours now takes 10 minutes with one prompt.

4. Comet wins on speed for real-time info - Stock prices, sports scores, breaking news. It's the fastest by far. Perfect for quick research sprints across Reddit, Twitter, and news sites.

5. Dia automates repeated workflows - Monitor competitor pricing weekly. Document onboarding flows. Generate recurring reports. Set it once, let it run on schedule.

6. Tab context is the hidden superpower - Open 5 competitor sites. Ask "What's the common pricing strategy?" The AI reads all tabs and synthesizes insights. Eliminates copy-paste friction.

7. The job seeker use case is mind-blowing - "Find 20 PMs at Google, get their LinkedIn profiles, draft personalized DMs." Atlas does this in 15 minutes. Used to take 2-3 hours manually.

8. Onboarding analysis becomes trivial - "Go through Notion's signup flow, capture screenshots, document each step." Dia does this in 5-10 minutes. Perfect for competitive analysis.

9. Don't log into sensitive accounts - Banking, email, social media with private data - keep these in your regular browser. Use AI browsers only for public research and data extraction.

10. The slowness matters less than you think - Yes, they're slow compared to Google. But if the alternative is 2 hours of manual work, waiting 10 minutes is a massive win. Batch requests and walk away.

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