Meta, OpenAI and Uber Just Taught AI Agents to Talk First. What About When to Stay Quiet?

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TL;DR: Meta’s Muse, OpenAI’s Dots and Uber’s driver assistant share one bet: the agent speaks first. That moves the hard problem from what to answer to when to interrupt, on which channel, and with what offer. Classic ML and new decision models can solve it.

Chatbots were a pull interface: the user chose the moment, the channel and the question. Proactive agents invert that. Interrupt too often and users mute you. Interrupt too late and the surge has ended or the invoice is overdue. Pick the wrong channel and a good message fails. The LLM can write the message; it is the wrong tool to decide whether to send it.

Every proactive message is a bet. Send only when its expected value to the user exceeds the cost of interrupting them. Value has four parts: how much is at stake, how likely the user is to act, how fast the opportunity expires, and whose