AI-Native Workplace: What Real AI Adoption Asks of You

Nate B. Jones (0:00)

Is the computer my computer, or is the computer really Codex's computer, and I just have a corner and talk to it? Because I find a lot of the time, I'm using Whisper Flow and I'm talking to the agent, and then there's this like cursor running around on these windows and it's doing user acceptance testing on something I'm building, and I don't even know what's happening on all of my windows anymore. When the context relevant to that role became generally available to the public.

Andrew (0:25)

Voices by far the most efficient way to get context in and to communicate information. But reading is much faster than listening.

Akshay (0:35)

And then actually like last week, it found pretty significant error in my taxes.

In your favor? In my favor.

Andrew (0:43)

Oh.

Akshay (0:44)

That ended up saving thousands of dollars and I was like, this is something that I would have never figured out.

Nate B. Jones (0:49)

And I underestimated the scaling law potential of computer use. I get to be here at OpenAI today. I am so excited. I know so many of you have asked more questions than I can count about what I can ask these guys at OpenAI.

The conversation I'm about to have is one I've been so excited to share with you, because it gets at the heart of what makes AI go from just the chat bot in your pocket to something that does meaningful work. So I'm going to be sitting down with Akshay and Andrew, and they're both deep into that transition, building the future of how we all work together. And really, we're going to go beyond the interface. What we're going to talk about is what does it feel like here at OpenAI to do work differently in the age of AI? No, they don't have all the answers figured out, but we're going to talk together about what that looks like in practice. We're going to talk together about lessons we can all take for how we work differently, and we're ultimately going to get to, I think, a point in the conversation where we can all understand some of the long-term trends that you can see from inside this building that are going to shape where we should go with our careers, where we should go with our skill sets, where we should go with our fluency in AI and what we focus on learning over the next six months to a year. So I've been super excited for this. I can't wait for you to dive in. Andrew, Akshay, I'm so excited we get to chat. Maybe first, could you tell us about who you are and how you came to be at OpenAI? Sure. Let's start.

Andrew (2:19)

Yeah. I'm Andrew. I started work on the Codex app, which is now our whole desktop app, and work on a variety of things there.

I've been here about a year now, a little over a year.

Nate B. Jones (2:31)

Cool. And where were you before that?

Andrew (2:35)

I was always in a startup world, so I was a founder for, I don't know, something like eight years doing little things, and then I got a chance to connect with some people here, and things have just really taken off. Yeah.

Nate B. Jones (2:49)

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, what about you?

Akshay (2:50)

Cool. I'm Akshay. I've been here for three years.

I joined OpenAI to lead the Chajabi Enterprise team, actually, and then I bounced around a bunch doing a bunch of consumer stuff, and then recently I've been focused on leading our productivity and engineering pillar, which is our goal is to bring useful agents to everyone, starting by focusing on knowledge work and developers.

Nate B. Jones (3:10)

And I guess maybe that's a great place to jump in. I am curious with the launch of Astra, Astra is now not just inside the walls, outside the walls, everyone has it. What do you guys see as the most surprising use case that you've seen for Astra out in the wild since it's come out?

Andrew (3:29)

The most surprising, I mean, the fruit fly has been a little wild.

Nate B. Jones (3:33)

That has been a little crazy, hasn't it?

Andrew (3:35)

But I think the one I didn't realize would take off and part of it's just because it's fun is the blender.

People just simulating these 3D environments. It's not the most useful thing that we use it for internally, but it's been pretty wild to watch people create these games and environments that they walk around in, that photorealistic. Every model that comes out has these spikes of things that can just do really well. And one of Astra's spikes has been 3D.