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Codex for almost everything

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Re: Codex for almost everything

#61

Post by entropicdrifter »

cortesoft wrote: post #50
entropicdrifter wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programmers mostly don't. Ordinary people see figuring out how to use the computer as a hindrance rather than empowering, they want Star Trek. They want "computer, plan my next vacation to XYZ for me" to lay out a full itinerary and offer to buy the tickets and make the reservations. Knowledge work is work most people don't really want to deal with. Ordinary people don't put much value into ideas regardless of their…

I have been a programmer for 30 years and have loved every minute of it. I love figuring out how to get my computers to do what I want. 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.

I'm on the same page, personally, but what I was trying to emphasize with my previous comment is that the non-tech people only want Star Trek

Re: Codex for almost everything

#62

Post by eldenring »

cjbarber wrote: post #41
eldenring wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the coding market will be much larger. Knowledge work is kind of like the leaf nodes of the economy where software is the branches. That's to say, making software easier and cheaper to write will cause more and more complexity and work to move into the Software domain from the "real world" which is much messier and complicated.

Yes, and the same thing will happen in non-coding knowledge work too. Making knowledge work cheaper will cause complexity to increase, more knowledge work.

I don't think so, the whole point of writing software is it is a great sink for complexity. Encoding a process or mechanism in a program makes it work (as defined) for ever perfectly.

An example here is in engineering. Building a simulator for some process makes computing it much safer and consistent vs. having people redo the calculations themselves, even with AI assistance.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#64

Post by cjbarber »

postalcoder wrote: post #58
cjbarber wrote: post #14

My current expectation is that the Cowork/Codex set of "professional agents" for non-technical users will be one of the most important and fastest growing product categories of all time, so far. i.e. agents for knowledge workers who are not software engineers A few thoughts and questions: 1. I expect that this set of products will be extremely disruptive to many software businesses. It's like when a new VP joins a co…

I agree with the sentiment but I think for normie agents to take off in the way that you expect, you're going to have to grant them with full access. But, by granting agents full access, you immediately turn the computer into an extremely adversarial device insofar as txt files become credible threat vectors. For all the benefits that agents offer, they can be asymmetrically harmful. This is not a solved issue. That…

> For all the benefits that agents offer, they can be asymmetrically harmful. This is not a solved issue.

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.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#65

Post by hebsu »

incognito124 wrote: post #35

I swear OpenAI has 2-3 unannounced releases ready to go at any time just so they can steal some thunder from their competitors when they announce something

Its not magic. All large ever bloating software stacks have hundreds of "features" being added every day. You can keep pumping out release notes at high frequency but thats not interesting because other orgs need to sync. And sync takes its own sweet time.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#66

Post by throwaway911282 »

romanovcode wrote: post #9
wahnfrieden wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was already leaked several days ago and they've been teasing it for weeks. They had already said that it was coming this week specifically.

Obviously they pressed the "publish" button since Opus was released. Do not deny it.

ant is known to release stuff before oai. oai is consistent on 10am launches

Re: Codex for almost everything

#67

Post by cjbarber »

louiereederson wrote: post #56
cjbarber wrote: post #14

My current expectation is that the Cowork/Codex set of "professional agents" for non-technical users will be one of the most important and fastest growing product categories of all time, so far. i.e. agents for knowledge workers who are not software engineers A few thoughts and questions: 1. I expect that this set of products will be extremely disruptive to many software businesses. It's like when a new VP joins a co…

Maybe but the product category is not necessarily a monolith in the same way that Claude Code is. These general purpose tools will have to action across a heterogeneous set of enterprise systems/tools. A runtime environment must be developed to do that but where that of the agent ends and that of the enterprise systems begins is a totally open question.

> Maybe but the product category is not necessarily a monolith in the same way that Claude Code is. These general purpose tools will have to action across a heterogeneous set of enterprise systems/tools.

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.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#68

Post by cjbarber »

eldenring wrote: post #62
cjbarber wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and the same thing will happen in non-coding knowledge work too. Making knowledge work cheaper will cause complexity to increase, more knowledge work.

I don't think so, the whole point of writing software is it is a great sink for complexity. Encoding a process or mechanism in a program makes it work (as defined) for ever perfectly. An example here is in engineering. Building a simulator for some process makes computing it much safer and consistent vs. having people redo the calculations themselves, even with AI assistance.

The history of both knowledge work and software engineering seems to be increasing in both volume and complexity, feels reasonable to me to bet on both of those trendlines increasing?

Re: Codex for almost everything

#69

Post by andai »

thomas34298 wrote: post #16

Does that version of Codex still read sensitive data on your file system without even asking? Just curious. https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/2847

https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1r186gl/my_agent_...

tldr Claude pwned user then berated users poor security. (Bonus: the automod, who is also Claude, rubbed salt on the wound!)

I think the only sensible way to run this stuff is on a separate machine which does not have sensitive things on it.

Re: Codex for almost everything

#70

Post by cjbarber »

jorblumesea wrote: post #55
cjbarber wrote: post #14

My current expectation is that the Cowork/Codex set of "professional agents" for non-technical users will be one of the most important and fastest growing product categories of all time, so far. i.e. agents for knowledge workers who are not software engineers A few thoughts and questions: 1. I expect that this set of products will be extremely disruptive to many software businesses. It's like when a new VP joins a co…

really struggling to understand where this is coming from, agents haven't really improved much over using the existing models. anything an agent can do, is mostly the model itself. maybe the technology itself isn't mature yet.

My view is different. Agent products have access to tools and to write and run code. This makes them much more useful than raw models.
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