ChatGPT vs Human EA vs AI Agent: An Honest Comparison

The Experiment

Six months ago, I set up an experiment. I was drowning in admin, context-switching between three businesses, and losing track of decisions I'd made the previous week. I needed help. But what kind?

I tested three approaches simultaneously: ChatGPT Pro ($20/month), a part-time human executive assistant (remote, 20 hours/week), and a custom AI agent built on my own infrastructure, accessible via WhatsApp.

Here's what I found.

ChatGPT: Powerful but Amnesia-Prone

ChatGPT is brilliant at generating content, summarising documents, and brainstorming. But it has a fatal flaw for busy professionals: it forgets everything.

Every conversation starts from zero. You re-explain your business, your preferences, your current projects. You upload the same documents again. You provide context that should already be known.

For one-off tasks, it's excellent. For an ongoing working relationship? It's like hiring someone with permanent short-term memory loss.

Score: 6/10 for productivity, 2/10 for continuity.

The Human EA: Reliable but Limited

My human EA was great — when available. She understood nuance, could make judgment calls, and brought emotional intelligence that no AI matches.

But she worked 9-to-5 IST. She got sick. She had personal emergencies. She needed training that took weeks. And when she eventually moved on, all the context she'd built up — my preferences, my filing system, my meeting patterns — walked out the door with her.

Score: 8/10 for quality, 4/10 for reliability and continuity.

The AI Agent: The Sweet Spot

The custom AI agent — running on self-hosted infrastructure, with persistent memory, document indexing, and WhatsApp integration — changed my workflow fundamentally.

It remembers every conversation. It has instant access to every document I've ever shared with it. It's available at 3am when I'm on a call with a client in a different timezone. It doesn't judge me for asking the same question twice. And it gets better over time, not worse.

Is it perfect? No. It can't negotiate with a supplier or read the room in a board meeting. But for 80% of the admin, research, and information-retrieval work that was eating my day? It's better than either alternative.

Score: 9/10 for productivity, 9/10 for continuity, 3/10 for emotional intelligence.

The Verdict

The right answer depends on your situation. But for most ambitious professionals running at capacity, the AI agent fills a gap that neither ChatGPT nor a human assistant can fill alone.

It's not about replacing humans. It's about handling the parts of your workload that don't require being one.