Claude CoWork: conclusions and caveats | Post 6 of 6

CoWork is the first Agentic AI tool for the non-technical audience. This series of posts has attempted to shed some light on why I think it is a significant moment in the evolution of AI. Possibly the most interesting observation was that if you can define and schedule the work well enough, the AI tool starts to disappear. All that remains is the work and its business value.

CoWork is a generalist tool that is surprisingly good at a very broad range of tasks. It is also the first of these tools to focus on business work. I don't think it will cause a SaaSpocalypse (see my previous post on that topic [1]), but I do expect it to disrupt the "personal AI tool" space: it may replace some of your personal AI subscriptions.

I think new types of problems will emerge as these tools gain traction. The ones that seem immediately obvious are a) governance, and b) organisational information silos.

Governance will be increasingly needed as tools get more powerful: enterprise-level rules and restrictions need to limit data access and control what tasks are permitted. At the moment these controls are with the end user, but any sane CISO will want central control. CoWork has the makings of this in the Enterprise plan, but many will look to their workplace providers like Microsoft and Google to simplify this for them. Potentially an existential moment for Anthropic and OpenAI who lack that layer.

The other risk is that privately curated skill libraries will probably lead to knowledge silos. These already live in peoples' heads, so codified silos are an improvement. The organisations that get ahead of this will centralise skills and data intentionally, before the silos form.

What does all this mean for business users? You should try this tool. And the next one that comes out. Get familiar with what is possible, so you can decide what fits your business best.

My parting thought: this space is very young - CoWork was only released two months ago. Imagine where the capabilities will be in a year from now. Makes you think.