Hemanth Asirvatham and Elliott Mokski published an essay on 28 October 2026 titled "The future of the firm," probing where AI fits inside a company's organisational chart — under, alongside, and linking human workers S¹P². The two authors attached an explicit disclaimer that the views are theirs alone and do not represent OpenAI or its colleagues P². The company building the models is hosting speculation about what those models do to companies, while keeping that speculation at arm's length.
My read: The three-position framing is the most interesting element here, because it implies distinct integration modes rather than the usual replacement binary. But I'm working from only the title and subtitle, plus the author note — the full essay wasn't in the evidence pack, so the specific arguments, examples, and any data behind the framework remain unchecked. I'd hold judgement until the full text is available. What I'd watch is whether the rest of the series moves from framework to evidence.
A framework for three integration modes
The piece is the second in a series OpenAI calls "the next economy," hosted on a platform for independent perspectives on an AGI future P². The subtitle positions AI in three places in a firm, using the same three-position framing P². That maps roughly to AI as a tool or peer, with the third position acting as connective tissue in workflows.
Asirvatham and Mokski state in their note that the essay reflects their personal views, not those of OpenAI or its colleagues P².
This is hosted speculation, not a corporate product announcement or a policy position.
Framework arguments remain unexamined
The full text of the essay was not available in the evidence reviewed for this article. Only the title and subtitle, plus the authors' note, were accessible P². The specific arguments and examples the authors use to support the three-position framework, along with any data, could not be assessed.
OpenAI did not announce specific enterprise products or management-replacement tools, nor timelines for any of the scenarios the essay describes. The language throughout the available material is speculative, using "might" rather than "will" P².
Open-weight models give firms raw material to experiment
The essay lands as OpenAI's open-weight models continue to circulate. The company's gpt-oss repository on GitHub, hosting two open-weight language models (gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b), has accumulated 20,495 stars since its creation in June 2025 under the Apache 2.0 licence P³ — a vendor-sourced figure from the repository page, not independently verified. Those models give firms the raw material to experiment with the kind of integration the essay describes, without sending data to an external API.
An IT director evaluating the framework could map their team's current AI usage against the three positions: drafting tools that sit under a human, co-analysis agents that work beside them, and routing systems that connect teams. The essay is available at openai.com/index/the-future-of-the-firm S¹.
It is the second essay in an ongoing series. The next instalment has not been dated.
Sources: S1 — The future of the firm · P2 — The future of the firm | OpenAI · P3 — openai/gpt-oss
Written from 3 sourced items, 3 of them primary.
