Jim Fan on World of Bits: OpenAI's 2016 booking-agent dream finally realized by GPT-6
DrJimFan · x · 2026-09-04
Jim Fan looks back at World of Bits inside OpenAI Universe (2016), where an agent stared at screen pixels and booked a United flight — a feat GPT-6's computer-use agent (Astra) now performs reliably a decade later.
Why it failed then: a policy with zero prior knowledge of what a "submit" button does had to rediscover the internet's visual lingua by trial and error, and RL from scratch with hand-drawn, per-task "artisan" rewards on Pascal Titan X GPUs was doomed. The winning recipe, he argues: hillclimb on every general task first, then specialize back down to pixels and keystrokes — a "Specialized Generalist." His takeaway: one step ahead you're a pioneer; three steps, a prophet; five steps, a martyr.
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