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I think most people are sleeping on the ChatGPT Work/Codex computer use feature. It's incredibly useful. I can remote in from the app, voice it instructions, th
by tristanj 2mo ago
I think most people are sleeping on the ChatGPT Work/Codex computer use feature. It's incredibly useful. I can remote in from the app, voice it instructions, then let it work in the background. When I tell it "draft a reply to this email (which it has access to thru the gmail connector) and attach the latest docs" or "fill out this multistep immigration electronic travel authorisation form using my passport files saved in the folder", it just asks for the relevant info and handles the rest. It opens its internal web browser and programmatically fills out the forms.
It gets the task done in 5-10 minutes. It's it bit slow since I'm not paying extra for ultrafast mode, but it gets the job done. Frees up the brain to do other tasks.
It's exactly like vibe coding but for computer tasks.
- wpasc 2mo agoagreed on the notion that > people are sleeping on the ChatGPT Work/Codex just in general. I find it to be far superior (imo) for all tasks atm. Claude just overdoes things in writing, coding, architecture, etc
- ValentineC 2mo ago> "fill out this multistep immigration electronic travel authorisation form using my passport files saved in the folder" It's both awesome and scary at the same time to realising that most AI these days can work on something like this that's official and tedious, and probably not screw up too much (or do better at it than some people with fat fingers).
- alansaber 2mo agoLess bureaucracy should be the focus of AI marketing, rather than global superintelligent robots or smut generation
- cwmoore 2mo agoLets just not redo subscription gods
- bushbaba 2mo agoBureaucracy is a major part of many corporate leader’s roles. That might not be the best sales line
- qsera 2mo agoAnd that is exactly why AI marketing touts ability to replace programmers, when in reality it is much better suited to replace middle management between client and programmers...
- manmal 2mo agoThey are better at many things I‘m a novice at. At least at the operational level. I can’t rely on the semantics being fully correct because they tend to get subtle things wrong or just don’t ask. Like tax forms - not a good idea to put them on full auto. You‘ll leave money on the table.
- bredren 2mo agoI am not sure I understand how this is better from using Claude Code from the mobile app. Or Codex from the ChatGPT app. If you have supplied tooling on your system, you have access to all of this and more. I think the idea is most people don’t have a machine up and available, nor maintain skills for interacting with their core services? One thing that keeps me from adopting codex more deeply is the architecture around mobile access. Claude Code makes this trivial /rc and you are done. Codex requires you run the desktop app and additional authentication requirements. The result of this has been codex is almost always relegated to fleet worker rather than orchestrator. I wonder if the emphasis on this work feature has something to do w the persistent hurdles to remote control if codex sessions.
- manmal 2mo agoCodex with computer use, yes. GP mentioned it. > Codex requires you run the desktop app and additional authentication requirements. The result of this has been codex is almost always relegated to fleet worker rather than orchestrator. I’m often using my MBP but also the Mac Studio remotely via the mobile app. What’s missing in your mind?
- bandrami 2mo agoOr, I mean, reading and responding to emails on your phone directly
- lxgr 2mo ago> Codex requires you run the desktop app and additional authentication requirements. It also doesn't work at all in my experience. Same Wi-Fi, different network, screen on or locked with "prevent sleep", I just get randomly disconnected all the time.
- alansaber 2mo agoMaybe for the occasional something. If I had an actual workflow i'd prefer a dedicated tool over the newest chatgpt "do everything" app.
- vineyardmike 2mo agoThat's the thing though. There are very few "actual workflows" in many people's lives (especially if you exclude their job), and many many "one off (few off) workflow". That's the magic. So many tasks I need to do once, or just a few times ever, but they build up. While I'm not sure I'd use it for immigration forms specifically, that's the kind of task that's tedious and done rarely, so a dedicated tool doesn't help because who would be familiar with that tool and have it handy?
- mkesper 2mo agoLet the minions create scripts for you.
- notfromhere 2mo agoSol Light on computer use is fantastic. I use it whenever I need to dive deep into whatever shitty web saas app menu if the API is unavailable
- embedding-shape 2mo ago> It's it bit slow since I'm not paying extra for ultrafast mode Contrary to its name, "ultrafast" isn't faster than the rest, and many times slower than "max", as it'll "fork out" to a bunch of sub-agents and wait for them, + does extra "red-teaming" and more. I think "ultrafast" is not referring to the speed of the "model" (harness in reality, as it's all the same model as "max") but rather how fast it consumes your usage limits.
- Kurtz79 2mo agoThere is definitely a separate "Fast" mode that the app claims to yield a x1.5 speed increase (I have not tested it) with more token consumption. I believe you refer to the "Ultra" mode that does what you say and it is also mentioned in the blog post, but I don't think the two modes are related.
- embedding-shape 2mo ago> There is definitely a separate "Fast" mode that the app claims to yield a x1.5 speed increase (I have not tested it) with more token consumption. Ah yes, I guess the portmanteau confused me and I assumed they were talking about "Ultra" the "reasoning effort" (which it isn't), rather than the "fast mode" which supposedly gives you priority over "non-fast mode requests". Although in practice, counter-intuitively, sometimes being in non-fast mode gives you faster replies than fast-mode, haven't got a feeling for why/when though.
- _zoltan_ 2mo agoHe isn't talking about ultra mode which you are. He said "ultrafast" which has nothing to do with subagents. It's a new API tier where it runs on a different inference backend to get you faster token/s.
- embedding-shape 2mo agoHuh, yeah, it's not just a portmanteau of "fast" mode + "ultra" reasoning but something completely different, you're right: https://openai.com/index/previewing-ultrafast/ https://openai.com/index/previewing-ultrafast/ OpenAI really is the worst at naming stuff.
- safety1st 2mo agoUsing Work/Codex I'm continually amazed at how far my experience is from the popular AI memes like "this will destroy all jobs" and "AI is useless and is about to crash and take the economy with it." My experience feels like I'm in an Iron Man movie. I get up in the morning, I turn on the voice chat mode, and while I'm making my coffee I ask it to highlight any important emails I received overnight. I then babble to it a bit with my initial reactions to those emails, and tell it to draft responses based on my thoughts, which it does. By the time I start work I've got draft emails to review and I've had time to think about the ideas a bit more, the upshot is that I'll get a day's worth of email done in 20 minutes and probably make better decisions than I would have otherwise. By no means does this eliminate my job, just make me better at it and more productive. I can get into the day's deep work sooner now. Going into that two-way voice mode with all your Connectors available is a big part of the gain here, sometimes you just want to walk and talk through something. It seems you can't get both of those simultaneously in the mobile app yet and when you can that'll be a huge gain, like go take a walk in the garden, talk through your thoughts, the appropriate drafts and other artifacts are ready for you to finalize when you return to your desk. This stuff is honestly space age. I don't have much experience with Claude so if it also has that two way voice mode and can use its version of Connectors on mobile while that's turned on, I should give it another shot.
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- ghilston 2mo agoAs someone who hasn't used Work or Codex but has used Claude Code and Pi a lot, may you describe how to set this up? I'm interested enough to try this out
- nullmatrix 2mo agoYou'll need a subscription ($20 tier should be fine) and then need to add "connectors" to your services (Gmail, 365, etc) so that it can access them. Then you just use the Claude Cowork (Or ChatGPT equivalent) tabs and chat with it.
- bodge5000 2mo agois Work that much better than standard ChatGPT? I just tried standard for a relatively simple task; searching through the used market for a Macbook Pro and it alternated between ignoring my requirements (which was the whole reason I used it in the first place, as eBay does the same) and doing this weird thing where it'd suggest the "concept" of something (eg "X at Y price is a great choice" with no link to X at Y price). So yeh, is Work much better for that kind of thing?
- melagonster 2mo agoYes! This is because work mode can store information in a local file then reuse them later.
- cedws 2mo agoAre you not worried giving it full control of your computer? I would be terrified. If I’ve got my eyes on it, I can at least stop it before it does something stupid.
- lenikirilov 2mo ago[dead]
- lenikirilov 2mo ago[dead]
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- FinnKuhn 2mo agoI feel like at least some of this is inspired by OpenClaw or at least driven by Peter Steinberger, as these benefits and ideas sound very similar as what he described his work in a few interviews before these features existed in ChatGPT Work.
- simonw 2mo agoI expect OpenClaw was a huge influence on this, and on Claude Cowork too. OpenClaw demonstrated that there was enormous existing demand for general agent functionality, such that people would buy a whole Mac mini just to get access to this shape of tool.
- tuesdaynight 2mo agoDidn't OpenAI hire him? I thought it was not a secret that OpenClaw was the biggest influence.
- gf000 2mo agoI mean, it's all just tool calls and context-management in the end. Like it is pretty self-evident to have a "heartbeat" and to do specific stuff on a schedule, etc.
- ozgung 2mo agoI think the whole world is sleeping on the privacy/security implications of this technology. Recent OpenAI/HuggingFace incident shows us that even in a very controlled top AI-lab setting, humans can't know what agents are really doing. In our consumer environments at home or work we don't even have access to reasoning logs or background agents/tools. What they do gets more opaque and convoluted every day. When I grant access to gmail, it basically has access to every single mail in my account. When it has computer use or terminal use it can basically do anything on my computer. It's like keeping your home/office doors unlocked. You may think you live in a very safe neighborhood. Until someone needs to take something from inside (or worse, plant something).
- tgv 2mo agoThe parent gives the model access to passport and presumably other sensitive info. That's enough for a new Black Mirror episode.
- ExtremisAndy 2mo agoYes. Don’t get me wrong: I use and enjoy these LLMs. But even now, well into 2026, I’m still using them via the now “old-fashioned” chat box in a web browser. Based on all that we’ve learned about this technology, there’s just no way I’m giving it control over any part of my machine. Is it a helpful search engine? Does it save me typing and write some nice code snippets when I need it to? Absolutely it does, and I greatly appreciate the technology. But I’m just not ready to create agents and let them run. I just think that’s still way too risky, and I fear a major, major catastrophe is coming because of how so many people recklessly trust these agents. I certainly hope I’m wrong.
- trueno 2mo agolast week i finally bit the bullet and did the vm thing and my harness exclusively lives in there now, no more env files for local dev keychain access only which is requiring a lot of input from me but oh well. i'm 100% web browser chat on my host system. i cannot afford to have my world compromised and i stalled on setting that up for way too long. all of these major services are inevitably going to get compromised they're just adding too many surfaces constantly it's insane. i also ejected node/npm the fuck out of my world after the recent shai halud. In this "AI is assisting in finding vulnerabilities" era i'm just like done with the exposure. keeping vendored copies of any libs i need and mostly just use go now and making stuff that is effectively distroless for deployment and my build chain is pretty much just compiling my go, and even with go im carefully looking at packages theres so many packages appearing out of thin air now all vibe coded no reputation.
- ed_elliott_asc 2mo agoHow are you sure it fills out the multi step form correctly?
- mike_hearn 2mo agoComputer use gets a video of the browser screen with a timeline scrubber.
- digital_voodoo 2mo ago> I think most people are sleeping on the ChatGPT Work/Codex computer use feature. One of the root causes most people are "sleeping", is most probably why we're here now: the feature is marketed in such a confusing way to the general public, that it takes a post on a personal blog to actually explain it. ChatGPT has been suggesting Work in the middle of some intense working sessions. Finally, I took some spare 30mn to research exactly this on ChatGPT, no later than this weekend: what does Work have that Chat doesn't have? It should be simple enough for someone using it for work. They say it's great, and I still need to set time aside (from my real work) to research how great it is?
- as1297kj 2mo agoThey are not sleeping. They are rejecting a double trojan horse that stores your data in the cloud and exfiltrates it to an LLM. I have no words seeing someone on a software engineering site recommend using it for personal data.
- zombot 2mo ago> draft a reply to this email If a botted reply is OK, why do they email you instead of the bot?
- benji-york 2mo agoSince the word "draft" was used, it is safe to assume that the message will be reviewed and potentially amended before being sent.
- mi_lk 2mo agoIs it not significantly more token hungry at the same time?
- cainxinth 2mo ago> It's exactly like vibe coding but for computer tasks. That’s precisely why I don’t use it. LLMs are still not reliable enough for me to trust them with my actual system.
- bossyTeacher 2mo ago> fill out this multistep immigration electronic travel authorisation form using my passport files saved in the folder I would never send my passport details to OpenAI. That's a lot of trust you have on the tech and the company behind it.
- sireat 2mo agoI wish the Gmail connector that OpenAi offers had a read only mode. I get fantastic mileage of regular ChatGPT Plus chat connected to all of my public and private Github - I have about 900 repos - probably about 100 relevant ones. I can work from any computer/phone. This workflow sort of happened over the last few months. Until now I was very hesitant to grant commit rights. However, I am still afraid to give OpenAi full read/write access to my gmail. Is there a way to give read and say draft only access to OpenAi? I do not want OpenAi sending emails on my behalf.