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Understanding ChatGPT Work

simonwillison.net

181–190 of 216 posts

Re: Understanding ChatGPT Work

#181

The elephant in the room is that ChatGPT Work/Codex use agentic quota, whereas Chat doesn’t (and is effectively unlimited on Plus and Pro plans). On this principle I’ve built Codexify[1], a connector that provides a Codex environment to ChatGPT Chat. This enables unlimited 5.6 Sol high/xhigh usage on the Plus and Pro plans as well as access to the 5.6 Sol Pro model (which is not available in official Codex). [1] http…

It's not clear to me why isn't the 5.6 Sol Pro available on Codex. Maybe due to the high computational demands and slow speed. But as an anecdote, once when the Sol Ultra models were stumped on one problem, I gave the full extended documentation and all the details to the Sol Pro model to review and provide a suggestion. It eventually did, but the Ultra pushed back against the proposals, and they also seemed sketchy to me as well. We eventually tried them and they didn't work.

Maybe the Sol Pro is not that great anymore, considering the token vs output balance.

Re: Understanding ChatGPT Work

#182
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 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.

Re: Understanding ChatGPT Work

#183
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to come across as dismissive of your job, but if a "day's worth of email" can be done in 20 minutes now, it to me mostly highlights that it was mostly busy-work with little value and could have had another process? Good that AI improved upon the old process, though.

Assuming your first sentence is accurate, I would disagree with the second. Making a bad process more efficient is a negative, not a positive, we should instead strive to improve the situation. The correct way to handle “busy-work with little value” should be to understand what lead to that point, fix it, then eliminate what’s unnecessary, not spend more resources (money, time, sanity) on making useless work be done…

Making a bad process more efficient is a negative, not a positive, we should instead strive to improve the situation.

This gent can Minesweep his extra free time and not tell his bosmang "I finished my day in 20 mins, what else you got?"

I appreciate your comment honestly, the

Those selling increases in productivity always promise more free time but what always happens is more work.

But the real is real, so now what? Better faster AI? Just curious, replying in good humor. Cheers.

Re: Understanding ChatGPT Work

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to come across as dismissive of your job, but if a "day's worth of email" can be done in 20 minutes now, it to me mostly highlights that it was mostly busy-work with little value and could have had another process? Good that AI improved upon the old process, though.

I mean, I can't stop people from emailing me. I get over a hundred non-spam, non-mailing-list emails on some days. I'm not able to respond to most of them. I'm often not expected to, I'm just being copied in as a FYI. The AI is able to assess subject and intent well enough to determine what should receive my limited time, and through the voice interface it converts "making coffee" time into "composing email" time. I…

I think something concerning is that your email has become a sluth and for people wanting to contact you and not your AI agent how do they break through that 2FA step

Re: Understanding ChatGPT Work

#185
> - Options to use Luna and Terra in place of Sol > - A code execution environment with Internet access > - A headless Chrome browser > - A persistent filesystem shared between sessions > - The ability to publish ChatGPT Sites > - The ability to run sub-agent sessions with Sol, Luna, and Terra > - Scheduled prompt automations (may be in ChatGPT Chat too)

I'm a bit confused. Why not just Codex...?

Re: Understanding ChatGPT Work

#186

> - Options to use Luna and Terra in place of Sol > - A code execution environment with Internet access > - A headless Chrome browser > - A persistent filesystem shared between sessions > - The ability to publish ChatGPT Sites > - The ability to run sub-agent sessions with Sol, Luna, and Terra > - Scheduled prompt automations (may be in ChatGPT Chat too) I'm a bit confused. Why not just Codex...?

Codex requires you to have an always-on computer to run it on.

ChatGPT Work Cloud gives you that computer as part of your existing subscription.

Re: Understanding ChatGPT Work

#187

Missing from here is the marketing position. Claude _very_ rapidly gained traction in the business/enterprise space earlier this year with Claude Cowork leading that drive. So successful it was, it lead to Microsoft licensing the Claude Cowork IP and white labelling it as Copilot Cowork (has anything like that ever happened before?!). ChatGPT Work was, imo, largely driven by a panic at OpenAI that they were haemorrha…

It's funny coz it seemed like they also cloned the confusion. I don't really understand what Claude Cowork is. Sometimes I use it instead of plain Claude Chat for tasks that "feel big"? And when I've done that I've felt this was the right choice. But until I actually had that session up and running I would not be able to articulate what Cowork is or enumerate any specifics of how I expected it to behave. I just thoug…

I echo this. It is not clear to me what the actual difference is.

Re: Understanding ChatGPT Work

#188
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…

If it hasn't accidentally sent one of your drafts yet, then I can see how you're comfortable with that.

Re: Understanding ChatGPT Work

#189
post #69
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 I’ve had this conversation with so many non-techies. They assume Codex can only do coding.

which is again where Anthropic has outplayed them. Because Claude is being happily applied everywhere as a universal term, with "Code" or "Cowork" only appended as necessary.

It seems the same to me; even the naming is extremely similar.

OpenAI Codex = Claude Code

OpenAI Work = Claude Cowork

Re: Understanding ChatGPT Work

#190
post #179
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think of it more as a SaaS hosting product providing some extra features that aren't in ChatGPT Chat - most notably a VM with a persistent filesystem, internet access, and a headless browser, made available to the standard OpenAI UI surfaces you already know how to use. You can wire such things up to an agent yourself in a bunch of alternative ways if you like - run OpenClaw, Hermes, or leave a computer running som…

Does the regular ChatGPT not have a VM? I've seen both Claude and ChatGPT do all kinds of strange "computer use" things even in the web chat. What surprised me the most was, when I tried uploading a book into the "project context" on Claude, the RAG indexer crashed, but Claude used a bunch of Unix commands to reverse engineer the file format and grep the book manually...

It does, but the ChatGPT Chat VM isn't allowed to talk to the internet, doesn't get a filesystem that persists between sessions, and doesn't have the ability to control a web browser.
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