Human in the Middle Is the Near Future of Work
OpenAI's Agent Builder proves the future of work is collaborative, not autonomous. Human-in-the-middle workflows combine AI efficiency with human judgment, creating the next evolution of productivity and innovation.
OpenAI just somewhat silently released the next major iteration of practical AI application.
Some say it's the n8n and pipeline orchestration SaaS killer. Seems OpenAI is in the business of swallowing entire industries as of late, but that's a bit besides the point.
This week they released Agent Builder which is a visual canvas for building multi-step agent workflows. This is the unlock that n8n and others were championing because this makes AI actually useful beyond chat. These pipelines represent the linear-flow agent orchestration that are currently replacing countless business functions.
But from the initial outset, OpenAI has done one thing that screams to me that they truly understand how to disrupt the future of work, and that's embracing "Human in the middle".
The [near] future of work is not "agents do everything and run completely autonomously". It's agents as collaborative tools supporting and 10x'ing existing human workflows.
In order to do this, you need seamless UX for human collaboration. Agents need to come to where the work is being done. Agents need to be able to collaborate with the teams doing the work. Doing this well is a major missing component in all existing pipeline orchestration tools today, and OpenAI made it the key component for their entire stack. "Human approval" is 1 of 10 nodes they deployed at launch. If they maintain this collaborative spirit as a key priority, adoption will skyrocket.