OpenAI has advanced its vision of full-scale AI automation with the introduction of the ChatGPT Agent. This newly launched tool is built to independently carry out a broad range of sophisticated digital tasks for users. Yash Kumar, a tech professional of Indian descent and part of OpenAI’s technical team, has played a pivotal role in shaping the company’s newest breakthrough — the ChatGPT Agent. In a demonstration and media session with The Verge, Yash Kumar and lead researcher Isa Fulford highlighted what the newly released tool can do. Kumar clarified that the ChatGPT Agent isn’t limited to just web browsing — it has control over a full computer system.
Yash Kumar Kumar’s educational background and career at OpenAI
Yash Kumar, originally from India, earned his degree in Computer Science from IIIT Hyderabad, a premier engineering institution in the country. He became part of OpenAI in November 2023 and is currently based at the organization’s San Francisco office. Prior to his role at OpenAI, Kumar worked for eight years at Google as a software engineer. He later held senior positions, including Head of Engineering at Scratch and Director at DoorDash.
About ChatGPT Agent:
The ChatGPT Agent combines capabilities from OpenAI’s earlier experimental tools — Operator, a web navigation and automation system, and Deep Research, a tool for comprehensive analysis. This integration enables the agent not just to analyze data, but also to perform tasks for the user. It can browse websites, schedule calendar events, create customizable slideshows and spreadsheets, and even run code inside a secure, isolated environment.
“Agent represents a new level of capability for AI systems and can accomplish some remarkable, complex tasks for you using its own computer. It combines the spirit of Deep Research and Operator, but is more powerful than that may sound—it can think for a long time, use some tools, think some more, take some actions, think some more, etc,” wrote Sam Altman in a post on X.
According to OpenAI, the agent is built for seamless collaboration, enabling users to pause or redirect it during a task to refine commands or modify its method—without sacrificing any of the work already completed.
“Likewise, ChatGPT itself may proactively seek additional details from you when needed to ensure the task remains aligned with your goals. If a task takes longer than anticipated or feels stuck, you can pause it, ask it for a progress summary, or stop it entirely and receive partial results. If you have the ChatGPT app on your phone, it will send you a notification when it’s done with your task,” says OpenAI in its blog post.
