Quoting Greg Brockman
- ID
- 10111
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 02 Aug 2026, 6:29 AM
- Fetched
- 02 Aug 2026, 7:28 AM
- Provider
- Simon Willison
- Category
- developer-ai
- Original URL
- https://simonwillison.net/2026/Aug/1/greg-brockman/
- Source URL
- https://simonwillison.net/atom/everything/
Summary
- Score
- 6.0
- Created
- 07 Aug 2026, 1:30 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersai_agent_userssaas_founders
What happened
Greg Brockman (OpenAI President and Co-Founder) observes that at OpenAI, many people connect ChatGPT to Slack, and coworkers react negatively when a colleague's ChatGPT messages them directly asking for help—even when they'd happily do the same work if asked by the human coworker. He frames this as evidence that people want AI to give time back or enhance collaboration, not insert itself as a separating layer between people.
Why it matters
If you are building AI agents that initiate contact with other humans (Slack bots, email agents, automated DMs), this is a concrete UX signal: the intermediary itself is the friction, not the request. Design agents to either draft messages for the human to send, or make the agent's involvement transparent and opt-in for the recipient—don't have an agent cold-contact a coworker as if it were the person.
Discussion angle
Where's the line between an agent that saves time and one that alienates coworkers? Compare patterns: agent-drafts-for-human-to-send vs. agent-sends-directly, and which contexts (internal team vs. external client) change the calculus.