AI companies want you to stop chatting with bots and start managing them

AI companies Anthropic and OpenAI have introduced products that shift the focus from chatting with single AI assistants to managing teams of AI agents that work in parallel. This move reflects a broader industry trend towards AI as a delegated workforce rather than just a conversation partner. While the effectiveness of this supervisory model is still uncertain and may require significant human intervention, companies like Anthropic with Claude Opus 4.6 and OpenAI with Frontier are investing in these multi-agent tools. These tools allow developers to split tasks into independent pieces, coordinate autonomously, and run concurrently, resembling a split-screen terminal environment. OpenAI's Frontier platform aims to enable businesses to "hire AI co-workers" that can handle various computer tasks, connecting to existing systems like CRMs and data warehouses.