Claim◆Article

The most important evolution in AI over the past year is the shift from conversational chat to agentic systems that can autonomously perform hours of human work.

The article traces how Ethan Mollick's guide to AI has shifted from recommending chat-based models a year ago to now emphasizing agentic systems that can do the equivalent of hours of human work autonomously. ✦ AI generated

Author · Simon Willison's Weblog · 2026-07-27 · original ↗

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A year ago it was still all about chat - ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini - with o3, Claude 4 Opus, and Gemini 2.5 Pro as the models and Deep Research as a useful alternative mode. Today it's much more about agentic systems - 'where the AI is capable of doing the equivalent of many hours of real human work in one go'.

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▦ Anthropic ▦ Google ▦ OpenAI ◉ Ethan Mollick

Around this claim

Evidence · 1

AI models' ability to complete real, economically valuable freelance projects end-to-end more than quadrupled in under eight months, rising from 2.5% success in October 2025 to 16.1% in July 2026.CAIS and Scale researchers · Import AI · conf 95%

In practice · 1

Codex's most valuable work now plays out over hours or days rather than minutes, so people should be able to delegate ambitious work without staying tied to the machine where it started.OpenAI · The Pragmatic Engineer · conf 80%

Counterpoint · 1

Everyone believes everything about how we work is about to be transformed by AI, but in reality, none of it has changed yet.David Pierce · Platformer · conf 75%

This moment responds to

supports → The most important shift in AI tool usage over the past year has been from conversational chat interfaces to agentic systems that can perform many hours of human work autonomously.Author · Simon Willison's Weblog provides context → Google's Gemini has fallen out of the recommended AI tools because the company still lacks a clear agentic computing product comparable to Codex, ChatGPT Work, or Cowork.Author · Simon Willison's Weblog provides context → Gemini has fallen off Ethan Mollick's list of recommended AI tools because Google lacks a clear product in the agentic coding and computer-use category.Author · Simon Willison's Weblog provides context → The naming of AI agent modes across ChatGPT and Claude is confusing and inconsistent, with Work, Codex, Cowork, and Code not mapping cleanly between platforms.Ethan Mollick · Simon Willison's Weblog extends → Giving AI access to your computer is the most powerful way to use it, but the naming conventions for the agentic modes across ChatGPT (Work, Codex) and Claude (Cowork, Code) are confusingly inconsistent and do not map onto each other.Author · Simon Willison's Weblog extends → The naming of AI agent modes across ChatGPT and Claude is confusing and inconsistent, with Work, Codex, Cowork, and Code not mapping cleanly between platforms.Ethan Mollick · Simon Willison's Weblog provides context → Giving AI access to your computer is the most powerful way to use it, but the naming conventions for the agentic modes across ChatGPT (Work, Codex) and Claude (Cowork, Code) are confusingly inconsistent and do not map onto each other.Author · Simon Willison's Weblog provides context → The difference between ChatGPT Work on mobile versus on desktop is spectacularly unintuitive — on mobile, switching from Chat to Work mode gives the Code Interpreter unrestricted internet access, while on desktop the same mode is effectively a skin on top of Codex.Author · Simon Willison's Weblog provides context → The difference between ChatGPT Work on mobile versus the desktop app is spectacularly unintuitive — mobile Work mode simply grants the Code Interpreter unrestricted internet access rather than providing agentic capabilities.Author · Simon Willison's Weblog