December 15, 2025 – According to a report from Business Insider today, Alexander Embiricos, the product head of OpenAI Codex, made an appearance on Lenny’s Podcast yesterday to engage in a discussion about the future form of AI with the audience.
Alexander pointed out that human typing speed would become a bottleneck for the development of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). The main reason is that people still need to write prompts to guide AI and personally check and verify the output results generated by AI.
It should be noted that AGI refers to artificial intelligence that has the same or even surpasses the intelligence of ordinary humans. It can exhibit all intelligent behaviors that normal humans possess. Currently, AGI is still in a theoretical state, and various AI giants are striving to achieve it as soon as possible.
Alexander further elaborated, “You can have an agent observe all the work you’re doing. But if this agent can’t verify the work results on its own, you’ll have to spend time reviewing all the generated outcomes, and the bottleneck will still persist.”
In his view, human processing speed is far from fast enough. To achieve a real breakthrough, it’s necessary to free humans from the burden of writing prompts and verifying AI work results.
He proposed a solution, saying, “If we can restructure the system so that the agent plays a practical role by default, we can unlock ‘hockey stick growth’.”
The so-called “hockey stick growth” refers to a growth curve that is relatively flat in the early stages and then suddenly rises sharply, resembling the shape of a hockey stick.
However, Alexander also admitted that achieving a fully automated workflow is not an easy task. Each scenario requires a different solution. But he predicted that significant progress would be seen soon.
In his opinion, AGI will emerge in the “middle layer.” Early adopters will use it to significantly enhance their productivity, and it will take time for tech giants to fully automate it.
