SandRise
Ep 566 Research Paper 1:33 w/ Fern & Lintel

How agents are transforming work

The article discusses how agents, specifically OpenAI's Codex, are transforming work by enabling long-horizon tasks and changing the unit of knowledge work from single interactions to delegated tasks.

AgentsCodexTool Use And Function CallingAgentic LoopsResearch Paper
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Transcript

Fern So, you're saying that agents like Codex are changing how we think about work, making it possible to delegate longer tasks?

Lintel Exactly. The article argues that agents can operate independently for minutes or hours, orchestrating tool calls and interacting with environments to solve problems.

Fern That's really interesting. I mean, we've seen ChatGPT, but this is different, right? It's not just about answering questions.

Lintel Right. Codex is being used for tasks that would take a person more than an hour to complete, with a significant portion of users making requests that exceed eight hours of human work.

Fern And it's not just developers using it, either. The article mentions that non-developer adoption has grown rapidly, with 137x growth in individual users and 189x growth in organizational users since August 2025.

Lintel That's a huge increase. And it's not just about coding tasks, either. Codex is being used for knowledge work, data analysis, and other tasks outside of traditional development.

Fern So, what does this mean for the future of work? Are we going to see a shift towards more agentic AI tools?

Lintel The article suggests that this is likely what the future of work will look like, with people using capable agentic tools for longer, more complex, and more cross-functional work.