OpenAI is rumoured to upping the ante in the AI game with a lineup of premium AI agents, priced at up to $20,000 per month. This aligns with their CEO's 2024 statement, announcing that their AI agents lineup would launch in 2025.
These aren't your average chatbots. They are elite, high-level knowledge workers, designed to supercharge businesses by replacing or augmenting highly paid professionals in a variety of fields.
Possible Pricing Breakdown:
$2,000/month for "high-income knowledge workers"—analysts, consultants, and decision-makers.
$10,000/month for software developers—because if you’ve ever wanted a coding assistant that never takes a coffee break, this is your chance.
$20,000/month for PhD-level research agents—offering a digital brainpower boost at a fraction of the cost of hiring a full-time scientist.
For businesses, this represents a unique opportunity: an instant way to integrate elite expertise into their workforce. Whether it's AI-powered sales lead ranking, a coding assistant for senior developers, or even nuclear fusion research assistance (yes, you read that right!), OpenAI—and likely other AI companies to follow— seems to be again at the forefront helping businesses scale their intelligence in ways that once seemed like science fiction.
SoftBank’s $3 billion commitment to OpenAI’s agent technology to integrate OpenAI's technology across its group companies. It shows just how massive the potential is—and companies are already deploying these tools in innovative ways.
The HR Challenge: Managing Digital Talent
I’ve warned for years, the rise of digital workers or AI hires means HR departments will need to evolve—and fast.
Over the past decade, I was invited to speak in front of many HR professionals, and time and again, my comment—“the employment of digital workers means HR departments will need to evolve”—has been met with skepticism. Some even dismissed it outright, with one company’s head of HR bluntly asking me to remove it from my analysis, despite their CEO’s intent to integrate more AI into their workforce.
Managing a digital workforce isn’t just about hiring AI agents; it’s about ensuring they fit into your organisational structure and your organisation’s business strategy (yes, typically your CEO decides!). The organisational structuremust adapt to accommodate the new AI hires. It’s time for HR to expand its role—learning to evaluate, integrate, and optimise these digital hires as part of a broader talent strategy. After all, these agents might not need lunch breaks, but they will need oversight to ensure they align with the company’s goals.
The Big Question: Can AI Pass a Performance Review?
Perhaps less so than their human hires equivalents, these digital elite workers come with one unknown: how often will they “hallucinate”? (AI-speak for making wildly inaccurate statements). So HR teams
must establish systems to monitor performance, evaluate outcomes, and implement quality controls to keep these high-level agents on track.
Perhaps it’s time for HR to see itself as not just a people management function, but also a digital talent overseer—ensuring AI stays productive, effective, and, most importantly, reliable. Clearly, HR need to be AI literate to deliver on this task.
Bringing AI into the workforce at an elite level is an enormous opportunity, but it’s also uncharted territory for HR. The digital workforce is still in its infancy, and companies that learn how to manage and integrate AI talent effectively will gain a significant competitive edge.
It's a challenge, no doubt —one that could make digital HR the next big thing.
For speaking engagements at corporate events and Board briefings, please write to me here or on Linkedin.
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