How agents are transforming work

A new Economic Research paper measuring Codex’s economic potential at the frontier. Agentic AI changes the unit of knowledge work from single interactions to delegated, long-horizon tasks. Chatbot interactions are often short and self-contained. Agents can operate independently for minutes or hours while orchestrating tool calls, interacting with environments, and iterating towards solutions. As a result, agents are quickly becoming the most powerful AI tool for work.

Over the last year, we witnessed this transformation first-hand at OpenAI. For the first few months after Codex was released to the public, ChatGPT remained the default AI tool for work within OpenAI. Through August 2025, the average OpenAI worker spent less than 10% of their tokens on Codex. Now, every department, including non-technical departments such as Legal and Recruiting, uses Codex as their primary AI tool for work.

This pattern reflects what we believe will be the future of work given the expanded capabilities and accessibility of agentic tools. Codex adoption grew in tandem with Codex’s capabilities. As Codex leveraged stronger models and new product features, it became capable of taking on…