Real AI Agents and Real Work
www.oneusefulthing.org- Category
- Education
- Pricing
- Free
- Type
- ARTICLE
- Builder
- @emollick
- Added
- Jul 21, 2026
About
An analytical essay by Ethan Mollick (One Useful Thing) examining how AI agents have crossed a threshold into performing economically valuable tasks. It explores OpenAI's expert task benchmark, uses Claude Sonnet 4.5 to reproduce academic research, and argues that the future of work depends on how thoughtfully we deploy AI.
Why it made the leaderboard
A grounded read on where AI agents actually produce economic value versus noise, anchored by a concrete demo of Claude Sonnet 4.5 reproducing an academic paper's findings — useful for calibrating expectations before deploying agents on real work.
Tags
ai-agentsfuture-of-workllmacademic-researchautomationproductivity
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