It looks like Andrej's definition of "agent" here is an entity that can replace a human employee entirely - from the first few minutes of the conversation:
When you’re talking about an agent, or what the labs have in mind and maybe what I have in mind as well, you should think of it almost like an employee or an intern that you would hire to work with you. For example, you work with some employees here. When would you prefer to have an agent like Claude or Codex do that work?
Currently, of course they can’t. What would it take for them to be able to do that? Why don’t you do it today? The reason you don’t do it today is because they just don’t work. They don’t have enough intelligence, they’re not multimodal enough, they can’t do computer use and all this stuff.
They don’t do a lot of the things you’ve alluded to earlier. They don’t have continual learning. You can’t just tell them something and they’ll remember it. They’re cognitively lacking and it’s just not working. It will take about a decade to work through all of those issues.
When you’re talking about an agent, or what the labs have in mind and maybe what I have in mind as well, you should think of it almost like an employee or an intern that you would hire to work with you. For example, you work with some employees here. When would you prefer to have an agent like Claude or Codex do that work?
Currently, of course they can’t. What would it take for them to be able to do that? Why don’t you do it today? The reason you don’t do it today is because they just don’t work. They don’t have enough intelligence, they’re not multimodal enough, they can’t do computer use and all this stuff.
They don’t do a lot of the things you’ve alluded to earlier. They don’t have continual learning. You can’t just tell them something and they’ll remember it. They’re cognitively lacking and it’s just not working. It will take about a decade to work through all of those issues.