ThursdAI > Guest Directory > David Pawlan
David Pawlan DP
Guest

David Pawlan

Creator of Assistant Benchmark

Merit Systems
1
Episode
September 17, 2026
Appeared
Guest
Role

Bio

David Pawlan leads growth at Merit Systems and created Assistant Benchmark, the use-case-driven leaderboard for personal AI assistants. On ThursdAI he described personally running 273 tests across 23 agents in the first week, why 116 submitted assistants get scored on 16 dimensions like memory and recommendations, and why setup-dependent stacks like OpenClaw and Hermes are excluded from out-of-the-box comparisons.

Guest Network — Also Appeared With

David Pawlan on ThursdAI Podcast

David Pawlan appeared as a guest on ThursdAI, the weekly AI news podcast hosted by Alex Volkov. Browse the full guest directory or subscribe on Substack to never miss an episode.

ThursdAI — The weekly AI podcast. Every Thursday, live.

Subscribe Free →