Sam Altman admits feeling “a little useless” after OpenAI’s Codex outperformed his ideas while building an app
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has shared an unexpectedly candid reaction after trying out his company’s newly launched Codex app for Mac. While the experience of building with AI felt exciting at first, it also left him grappling with an unfamiliar emotion — feeling “a little useless.”
Just a day after OpenAI introduced Codex as a standalone application for Apple computers, Altman took to X to talk about testing the tool himself. He said he had used Codex to create an app from scratch and enjoyed the process. But once the foundation was set, he began asking the AI for suggestions to make it better.
That’s when the moment hit him.
“At least a couple of them were better than I was thinking of,” he wrote. “I felt a little useless and it was sad.”
The honesty of his admission quickly resonated across the tech community. Here was the head of one of the world’s most influential AI companies acknowledging how powerful — and slightly unsettling — his own creation could feel.
Codex is designed to simplify what many developers now call “vibe coding,” a more intuitive, idea-driven approach where AI handles much of the heavy lifting. Rather than interacting with one assistant at a time, users can deploy multiple AI agents simultaneously. Each agent works independently on different parts of a project, running in parallel threads that stay organised by task or workflow.
OpenAI describes the app as a kind of command centre for development. Users can review changes, manage longer tasks, and collaborate more efficiently without losing context. These AI agents aren’t just chatbots — they can autonomously write, edit, and refine code, and even perform tasks like image generation through built-in skills.
AI-powered coding assistants have surged in popularity over the past year, and Codex appears to be riding that wave. According to OpenAI, more than one million developers used Codex in the past month alone. The tool was first introduced in April and expanded widely in October, with the Mac app marking its next major step.
Competition in this space is also heating up, with companies like Anthropic and Cursor offering similar AI-driven development tools.
Inside OpenAI, Codex has already built a strong following. Altman said it is “the most loved internal product we’ve ever had.” He added that the team has been relying on it heavily and described the experience as “totally amazing.” “I’ve been staying up late at night with excitement, building all sorts of things myself,” he said.
Although Codex is typically bundled with paid ChatGPT plans — including Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu — OpenAI has temporarily opened access to free users and those on its lower-cost Go tier. Paid subscribers are also receiving higher usage limits for a limited time.
Despite the rapid progress of AI tools like Codex, Altman maintains that everyday life may not change as dramatically as many expect — even if moments like this make developers pause and rethink their own role alongside intelligent machines.