AI’s third era: the rise of persistent AI coworkers | Tara Seshan (Product Lead ChatGPT Work)
- ID
- 19536
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 30 Aug 2026, 8:31 PM
- Fetched
- 01 Sep 2026, 12:33 AM
- Provider
- Lenny's Newsletter
- Category
- product-startup
- Original URL
- https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/ais-third-era-the-rise-of-persistent
- Source URL
- https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/feed
Summary
- Score
- 6.5
- Created
- 01 Sep 2026, 12:33 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- ai_agent_userssaas_foundersai_ml_learners
What happened
Tara Seshan, who leads product for Codex and ChatGPT Work at OpenAI, argues we're entering AI's 'third era' where persistent AI coworkers shift human work from 'rowing' (execution) to 'steering' (judgment and direction). She discusses building for model capabilities 2-3 months ahead, and claims ambition—not technical skill—is becoming the new bottleneck for companies.
Why it matters
If you're building products or teams around AI agents, the 'steering vs rowing' framing suggests you should design workflows and tooling around human judgment and delegation rather than execution—meaning your hiring, product roadmaps, and agent architectures should optimize for ambition and direction-setting, not task completion. The 'build for where models will be in 2-3 months' principle is a concrete planning heuristic for anyone shipping AI-dependent features today.
Discussion angle
Is 'ambition as the new bottleneck' actually true for Malaysian startups and builders, or is it a framing that only applies to well-funded teams with access to frontier models? Test the 'build for 2-3 months ahead' heuristic against real shipping constraints.