As employers struggle to fill key roles, a new generation of artificial intelligence tools is offering a different answer to the talent crunch: instead of hiring more people, use AI to make existing staff dramatically more capable via AI agents.

Two recent launches - OpenAI’s Frontier platform for building “AI co‑workers” and Anthropic’s long‑running Claude Code and Cowork agents - point to how quickly this shift is arriving inside workplaces. Together, they sketch a future in which most digital work is orchestrated by people but executed by fleets of software agents that rarely log off.

OpenAI’s new Frontier platform lets organisations design, deploy and manage AI agents that can draw on company data and perform tasks such as working with files, querying business systems and running code. These agents can connect to tools like customer relationship management platforms or collaboration apps, and act as a kind of digital colleague that can be directed toward specific goals.

Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of applications, has described these systems as “AI co‑workers” that collaborate with humans and coexist alongside agents from other vendors. She told reporters that “by the end of the year, most digital work in leading enterprises will be directed by people and executed by fleets of agents. This is already true for coding, and it’s going to happen for many other areas, too.”

Anthropic is pushing in a complementary direction. Its Claude Code and Cowork tools are examples of “long‑running” AI agents - systems that do not just answer a prompt and stop, but can keep working in the background, maintain context over time and pursue multi‑step objectives. Instead of a chat exchange, a user can point Claude at a folder of files, set an objective such as synthesising research or extracting data, and let the agent carry the work through.

Scott White, Anthropic’s head of product for enterprise, has explained that these agents can operate with “long‑horizon” thinking. A reasoning model is paired with a technical “harness” that can connect to real systems, execute code and manage workflows. The result is an assistant that can autonomously move a project forward over hours or days, while employees check in and course‑correct.

For employers grappling with talent shortages - in HR, finance, legal, analytics, customer support and more - these tools change the basic equation. Instead of treating headcount as the only way to scale output, leaders can start thinking about how to scale the capability of the people they already have.

In interviews about these systems, White has said that work is changing at three levels: individuals, workflows and business models. On an individual level, professionals can take on more complex work because AI takes over many of the rote tasks that previously filled their days. Product managers, for example, are already using agents to perform data‑science tasks that once required dedicated specialists.

At the workflow level, companies are tearing down long, sequential processes in areas such as marketing, compliance and product development. The near‑instant combination of internal data, external research and customer feedback can compress weeks of analysis into minutes of execution. That has clear implications for HR teams under pressure to deliver new policies, learning paths or workforce plans with fewer people and less time.

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