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Understanding ChatGPT Work

simonwillison.net

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Re: Understanding ChatGPT Work

#71

Post by ghilston »

safety1st wrote: post #64
tristanj wrote: post #4

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 sav…

Using 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…

As 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

Re: Understanding ChatGPT Work

#72

Post by Kurtz79 »

embedding-shape wrote: post #62
tristanj wrote: post #4

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 sav…

> 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 you…

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.

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.

Re: Understanding ChatGPT Work

#73

Post by embedding-shape »

Kurtz79 wrote: post #72
embedding-shape wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 you…

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. 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.

> 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.

Re: Understanding ChatGPT Work

#74

Post by bandrami »

bredren wrote: post #15
tristanj wrote: post #4

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 sav…

I 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 arou…

Or, I mean, reading and responding to emails on your phone directly

Re: Understanding ChatGPT Work

#75

Post by simonw »

coder-pm wrote: post #55

Non devs running something might not be aware the programs runs locally and touches the actual machine. Devs know to be careful but regular users won’t even have knowledge it’s touching their machine, filesystem and might even touch the credentials (thanks to reasoning). The right fix is to set real boundaries and limit agents access. We should never trust it won’t touch forbidden places. Basically I find this naming…

That's not true of ChatGPT Work (Cloud), accessed through the mobile apps or the ChatGPT website.

It IS true of ChatGPT Work (Local), accessed via the ChatGPT desktop app.

I agree with you: Expecting non-devs to understand that distinction - especially when these features are visually indistinguishable from each other - is entirely unreasonable!

Re: Understanding ChatGPT Work

#77

Post by simonw »

weedfroglozenge wrote: post #37
arcanemachiner wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it makes you feel any better, I have just upvoted every submission made by your account.

I mean he is kind of speaking truth. Anything Simon posts seems to get upvoted and this article is nothing special or interesting. It's like a tutorial for a feature of a ChatGPT subscription.... Cool.

Find me a clearer explanation of what ChatGPT Work actually is.

I wrote this because I got frustrated waiting for someone else to figure that out and write about it.

Re: Understanding ChatGPT Work

#78

Post by bodge5000 »

tristanj wrote: post #4

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 sav…

is 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?

Re: Understanding ChatGPT Work

#79

Post by cedws »

tristanj wrote: post #4

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 sav…

Are 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.
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