Codex for Almost Everything

Compare the actual operations done for code to add 10 8-digit numbers to an LLM on the same task. Heck, I'll even say, forget the possibility the LLM may be wrong. Just compare the computational resources deployed. How many FLOPS for the code-based addition? How many for the LLM? That's a worst-case scenario in some ways but it also gives you a good sense of what is going on.

Humans may stop looking at it but it's not going anywhere.

Everyday people can now do much more than they could, because they can build programs.

The idea that code is something sacred and only devs can somehow do it is dying, and I personally love it, as I am watching it enable so many of my friends and family who have no idea how to code.

Today, when we think of someone "using the computer" we gravitate towards people using apps, installing them, writing documents, playing games. But very rarely have we thought of it as "coding" or "making the computer do new things" -- that's been reserved, again, for coders.

Yet, I think that a future is fast approaching where using the computer will also include simply coding by having an agent code something for you. While there will certainly still be apps/programs that everyone uses, everyone will also have their own set of custom-built programs, often even without knowing it, because agents will build them, almost unprompted.

To use a computer will include _building_ programs on the computer, without ever knowing how to code or even knowing that the code is there.

There will of course still be room for coders, those who understand what's happening below. And of course that software engineers should know how to code (less and less as time goes on, though, probably), but no doubt to me that human-computer interaction will now include this level of sophistication.

We are living in the future and I LOVE IT!

Since when? HN is truly a bubble sometimes

I also want Star Trek, though. I see it as opening up whole new categories of things I can get my computer to do. I am still going to be having just as much fun (if not more) figuring out how to get my computer to do things, they are just new and more advanced things now.

Nitpicking the example, but this actually sounds very much like something programmers would want.

Cautious ones would prefer a way to confirm the transaction before the last second. But IMO that goes for anyone, not just programmers.

Also I get the feeling the interest in "computers" is 50/50 for developers. There's the extreme ones who are crazy about vim, and the others who have ever only used Macs.

This seems true to me, though I'm not sure how it connects here?

At this point it's a foregone conclusion this is what users will choose. It'll be like (lack of) privacy on the internet caused by the ad industrial complex, but much worse and much more invasive.

The threats are real, but it's just a product opportunity to these companies. OpenAI and friends will sell the poison (insecure computing) and the antidote (Mythos et all) and eat from both ends.

Anyone trying to stay safe will be on the gradient to a Stallmanesque monastic computing existence.

I don't want this, I just think it's going down that route.

Strongly agreed.

I saw a few people running these things with looser permissions than I do. e.g. one non-technical friend using claude cli, no sandbox, so I set them up with a sandbox etc.

And the people who were using Cowork already were mostly blind approving all requests without reading what it was asking.

The more powerful, the more dangerous, and vice versa.

Sort of agreed, though I wonder if ai-deployed software eats most use cases, and human consultants for integration/deployment are more for the more niche or hard to reach ones.

I strongly doubt that. That’s like saying conversation is the ultimate way to convey information. But almost every human process has been changed to forms and structured reports. But we have decided that simple tools does not sell as well and we are trying to make workflow as complex as possible. LLM are more the ultimate tools to make things inefficient.

What would make it not be a monolith? To me it seems like there'll be a big advantage (e.g. in distribution, user understanding) for most people to be using the same product / similar interface. And then the agent and the developer of that interface figure out all the integrations under that, invisible to the user.

I think the market uptake of Claude Cowork is already massive.

For now she was only able to do that because I set up a modified version of my agentic coding setup on her computer and told her to give it a shot for more complex tasks. It won't be trivial, but I do think there's a big opportunity for whoever can translate the experience we're having with agentic coding to a non-technical audience.

What are you using today? In my experience LLMs are already pretty good at this.

> Please for the love of god actually go outside and talk to people outside of the tech bubble.

In the past week I've taught a few non-technical friends, who are well outside the tech bubble, don't live in the SF Bay Area, etc, how to use Cowork. I did this for fun and for curiosity. One takeaway is that people at startups working on these products would benefit from spending more time sitting with and onboarding users - they're very powerful and helpful once people get up and running, but people struggle to get up and running.

> People don't want "personalized interfaces that change every second based on the whims of an unknowable black box". They have plenty of that already.

I obviously agree with this, I think where our view differs is I expect that models will be able to get good at making custom interfaces, and then help the user personalize it to their tasks. I agree that users don't want something that changes all the time. But they do want something that fits them and fits their task. Artifacts on Claude and Canvas on ChatGPT are early versions of this.

Most people are indifferent to computers. A computer to them is similar to the water pipeline or the electrical grid. It’s what makes some other stuff they want possible. And the interface they want to interact with should be as simple as possible and quite direct.

That is pretty much the 101 of UX. No deep interactions (a long list of steps), no DSL (even if visual), and no updates to the interfaces. That’s why people like their phone more than their desktops. Because the constraints have made the UX simpler, while current OS are trying to complicate things.

So Cowork/Codex would probably go where Siri is right now. Because they are not a simpler and consistent interface. They’ve only hidden all the controls behind one single point of entry. But the complexity still exists.

(This is the real, official name for the AI button in Office)

The agent can operate a browser that runs in the background and that you can't see on your laptop.

This would be immensely useful when working with multiple worktrees. You can prompt the agent to comprehensively QA test features after implementing them.

...at least for my account, the speed mode is 1.5x the speed at 2x the usage