Why Did Computer Use Change 180 Degrees?

Shawn Wang says a leading AI podcast, friends of the show, is famous for claiming computer use has not advanced in the last two years. Ari Weinstein says the claim is a few months old, and he hopes the view has changed, because computer use is 180 degrees different than it was.

The change he describes is the last year of models. At Sky, after Shortcuts at Apple, the models could start a task and then get stuck. They now debug, try again, and check what is working. In Codex, computer use often writes JavaScript and runs many actions at once instead of one action at a time. The model may use a screenshot, accessibility, or Playwright, depending on the task.