Ex-OpenAI researcher's Core Automation lets agents run real online businesses, hiring 'AGM' interns
_arohan_ · x · 2026-10-21
Riley Thompson (@rtwlz), formerly a researcher (ex-OpenAI circle), joined Core Automation, a small lab exploring new ways for models to learn, and is hiring four interns as 'Associate General Managers':
- The lab set up several small real online businesses, each with its own bank account, debit card, browser and email — and put an agent in charge to sell real things to real customers.
- It's an open-ended, unforgiving agent benchmark: countless decisions, delayed feedback.
- The 3-month internship lets you spin up niche stores, source products, sell software or services, doubling down on what finds customers.
- Joanne Jang adds: not just for students — the future is 'a few people with judgment and a budget, plus agents that learn from the real world' doing what used to take a whole org.
More from AGI Musings
- Fields medallist says OpenAI's 700+ AI math manuscripts left him in tears — miniapeur · 2026-10-21
- DeepMind robotics head joins Berkeley, Boston Dynamics panel on humanoid motion & perception — VLA vs agentic coding debate — chris_j_paxton · 2026-10-21
- Anthropic taps law firms to teach AI agents how to negotiate deals — jkubicki · 2026-10-21
- komorama's weekly: the AI Peter Principle—first 90% never faster, second 90% never slower — lennysan · 2026-10-21
- Multi-agent swarm architectures are being discovered, not designed — shared state emerges as the norm — JensHonack · 2026-10-21
- a16z talks health AI with OpenAI's Karan Singhal: 300M people weekly ask ChatGPT health questions — a16z · 2026-10-21