ChatGPT Atlas and the next era of web browsing — the OpenAI Podcast Ep. 9

1. AMAndrew Mayne0:00

   Hello, I'm Andrew Main, and welcome to the OpenAI Podcast. There have been a lot of exciting releases from OpenAI recently, including GPT 5.1, Sora, and one of my favorite new applications, ChatGPT Atlas. Today, we're going to be talking to the team behind it, Ben Goodger and Darin Fisher, and explore some of the reasons for why OpenAI decided to make a browser, what the future of agentic capabilities mean, and where everything's headed next.

2. DFDarin Fisher0:27

   [upbeat music] The time is right 'cause it's actually how people should be starting their journey.

3. BGBen Goodger0:32

   We're moving to a world where you can just tell the computer what you want.

4. DFDarin Fisher0:35

   So I think it's kind of powerful, this idea that it, that the agent has its own workspace.

5. BGBen Goodger0:39

   My view for this has always been that this is like a long-term investment.

6. AMAndrew Mayne0:45

   Let's begin with, what is Atlas and why?

7. BGBen Goodger0:50

   So Atlas is a new kind of browser, uh, for an era of the web where people are interacting with new technology in natural language. And so it's a- the kind of browser where you can just tell it what you want, whether it's to find the next outfit that you're gonna buy or to help you solve a really hard problem, and then it can help you harness the web to get a bunch of stuff done. Um, and so central to this, this idea is that if we take ChatGPT and make it the heart of your browser, not just an add-on, uh, it's something that can actually help you make sense of the content that you're seeing on the web. It's something that can help you take action on the web. It's something that can, you know, learn from your browsing to personalize your experience and help you with tasks that aren't just done in a few minutes, but might take days, or weeks, or months, or just generally help you, uh, become a more curious, more effective person.

8. DFDarin Fisher1:48

   And it can help you come back to a task that maybe you've not had a chance to work on in a while because it will remember what you were doing for you and help, help you, uh, get right back into where you were.

9. AMAndrew Mayne2:00

   Why now?

10. BGBen Goodger2:01

    I think the, the progression of technology, you know, with, with these AI models has been really stunning to watch over the past couple of years. Uh, and it feels like we're at this sort of sweet spot, where the capabilities of, of, um, not just the LLMs that have powered ChatGPT, but also sort of this new area of, uh, computer use and some of the other surrounding technology, is at a point where we can build some really compelling experiences for people, so we wanted to give it a shot.

11. DFDarin Fisher2:31

    You know, like Ben said, the models have gotten so much better, and they continue to get better, and you see the slope of innovation there and the pace of, of improvement. If you look back at the beginning of the year when Operator first came out, for example, and it sort of like hints at some of the potential, and now you fast-forward to where Atlas is with agent, agent and how much faster it is, how much more capable it is, just look at that slope, and you start to project, "What about ne- what's it gonna look like next year, five years out?" et cetera. And to get this sort of-- get that foundation in place, that's what we were excited about, and it felt like the right time. Uh, for me, personally, you know, I, I felt like, you know, I had made that transition to seeing how ChatGPT makes so much sense in my life to- and how much I was using it and feeling like I'm putting ChatGPT at the core of a browser, not just another tab that you have to go to, to... but to have it be at the core and part of that flow. The time is right 'cause it's actually how people should be starting their journey, and so we want to make that, uh, just so natural and easy. And, and, and, uh, so I'm really excited to-- that, that we've been able to bring Atlas up, and I'm excited to bring it to more platforms.

12. AMAndrew Mayne3:40

    You two have quite a bit of history working in browsers. Uh, Netscape, uh, you've worked on Firefox and Chrome, and I'd like to kind of understand where you think we are right now with browsers. We've got, like, over a 30-year history of these, and now it seems like-- they seem like they've been changing a little bit incrementally, and then all of a sudden, now we're adding AI to it, et cetera. And how do you look at the browser landscape?

13. BGBen Goodger4:04

    Well, I think we have, um, entered this really exciting time on the web, where we've added, um, this, this very, uh, human form of interaction, uh, in the form of these large language models, that you can just speak to the software and have it do the right thing for you. Uh, and so I think that's really gonna transform the way people get stuff done online. We've gone from a world where you've had to remember website addresses, you've had to go and search for them, and now you're just gonna be able to ask for the task that you want to get done, and you're gonna see it get done.

14. AMAndrew Mayne4:35

    I've noticed that a lot of people were thinking, like: Will we still have browsers? That was a question, "Are we gonna have browsers?" And it seems like browsers are gonna be here to stay for a while. Is that something you both feel?

15. DFDarin Fisher4:44

    It's a tool that people reach for a lot.

16. BGBen Goodger4:47

    Mm-hmm.

17. DFDarin Fisher4:47

    You get a lot of things done on the web and using a browser. It's, uh, it's hard to imagine that not being a, a big part of, uh, how, how people use, uh, their computers. Um, I think that, uh, you know, I've been- we've been through many phases of the internet and many phasors- phases of browser development. There was a time when, you know, "Here comes mobile. Why, why would anybody use their, their laptop anymore? Why would anybody use a desktop computer?" And yet people continue to use desktop computers. They reach for it for very different things, maybe, and now that they can also reach for their phone for certain things. But the, the web browser continues to be, like, such an important tool on your computer for how you get work done, how you do research tasks, how you, you know, look for information and do, um, that kind of work. You know, substantive work happens within the browser, happens on the web. Don't really see that changing. If anything, I see that growing, um, because it's a- it's this, like, conduit to all the world's information. It's such an easy platform for people to bring experiences and make it available to everybody, and the browser just makes that so easy.

18. BGBen Goodger5:51

    There's something sort of, um, interesting about it, where, like, every-... well, you know, of all of the sort of technological advancements that we've had over the past, you know, twenty-five, thirty years, you know, with the web, um, there's something very durable, durable about the browser-

19. DFDarin Fisher6:04

    Yeah

20. BGBen Goodger6:04

    - where like, even if you look at this most recent wave of generative AI, you know, with, with ChatGPT launching, it launched on the web.

21. DFDarin Fisher6:11

    Mm.

22. BGBen Goodger6:11

    It's, uh, you know-

23. DFDarin Fisher6:12

    It's true

24. BGBen Goodger6:12

    ... I think, a very powerful reflection of the capabilities of this platform.

25. DFDarin Fisher6:15

    And the platform's itself is amazing. I don't really need to recount all of the ways it's amazing, but the fact that it's this very inherently open platform, you know, content is published to an, an open un, you know, platform, an open internet, where anybody can stand up a browser to consume that content. There are really no gatekeepers when it comes to the web, which is a really remarkable aspect to it. So people can freely publish information, and p- people can freely go and find that information, and so it's, it allows it to just blossom and grow and evolve in different ways. And then it's very natural that you might want to take something like an LLM and point it at it, because now it can, on your behalf, try to understand it and help you navigate it. So the idea that, uh, it can do all that means it just makes it so much easier when you're trying to take advantage of all that information that's out there as a user. Here it is, it can go and find it for you or understand it for you, or explain it to you, or... I just want to say, I think it's been really interesting to see the evolution of the web. You know, we got started in an era where, you know, it was the coming off of the dot-com boom, right? The, the, the, the needs of the browser back then were different. The kinds of things people were doing on the internet were different. They were totally exploring, and then over the course of time, as we've worked on browsers, the kinds of things people tried to do in the browser was just so much more. If you go back to, like, um, early two thousands, you had the evolution of, like, these more advanced web applications. Like, you, you know, I remember marveling at Google Maps when it first launched.

26. BGBen Goodger7:40

    Mm-hmm.

27. DFDarin Fisher7:41

    The fact that you could just scroll and pan through a map so effortlessly, and then it goes on from there, you know, uh, all the different kinds of web apps that people take for granted, things like YouTube or, you know, I'm going to list a lot of Google apps 'cause I worked at Google, but-

28. BGBen Goodger7:54

    Mm

29. DFDarin Fisher7:54

    ... you know, Gmail, Google Docs, all these things. The kinds of things that, uh, you mean I can do all of that in my browser? It's kind of amazing. And-

30. BGBen Goodger8:01

    It's become sort of like this, this operating system for your life-

Episode duration: 1:14:21