NLP Lineage

22 October 2024 · Multimodality

Computer use

Claude computer use

Anthropic

Date
22 October 2024
What the date marks
Announcement
Kind
Product
Organisation
Anthropic
Access
API (beta)
Threads
In the guided tour
Chapter 13. Models that act
Learning phases
7. Agents

A milestone: 1 later milestone descends directly from it, and its descendants reach 2 of the 10 threads. How levels are decided

Read the primary source (anthropic.com)

Full summary in progress. Until then, this page shows the milestone's record from the research data.

What it changed

Before it

Agents acted through APIs and function calls, so they could only use software that offered one.

The problem

Most software has no API. It has a screen, a mouse and a keyboard.

What it introduced

The model looks at screenshots and moves the cursor, clicks and types like a person.

Why it matters

It removed the API precondition for automation and started the computer-use agent line across all major labs.

What modern models inherit

The screen as a universal interface for agents.

What came next

OpenAI's Operator, Gemini's agentic modes, and the 2026 computer-using coding agents.

Before and after

The milestones it descends from, and the milestones that descend from it. Work developed alongside it is not counted. Weak links are left out unless you include them.

Before: where it came from

Computer use has 44 documented ancestors across 10 chapters, reaching back to Recurrent networks in 1990. Showing its direct parents and the 17 turning points among them.

Computer use has 44 documented ancestors across 10 chapters, reaching back to Recurrent networks in 1990. Showing all of them.

Computer use has 52 recorded ancestors, including indirect ones, across 11 chapters, reaching back to Recurrent networks in 1990. Showing its direct parents and the 17 turning points among them.

Computer use has 52 recorded ancestors, including indirect ones, across 11 chapters, reaching back to Recurrent networks in 1990. Showing all of them.

  1. 2024Computer useThis milestone.
  2. 2024Claude 3.5 SonnetComputer use built directly on thisChapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  3. 2024Claude 3Claude 3.5 Sonnet built directly on thisChapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  4. 2023GPT-4VComputer use was influenced by thisChapter 11. Seeing and hearing
  5. 2023GPT-4 Turning pointGPT-4V built directly on thisChapter 7. The assistant goes public
  6. 2023ClaudeClaude 3 built directly on thisChapter 7. The assistant goes public
  7. 2022Constitutional AIClaude 3 built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  8. 2022GPT-3.5 Turning pointGPT-4 succeeded thisChapter 7. The assistant goes public
  9. 2022HH-RLHFConstitutional AI built directly on this
    Claude was influenced by this    Chapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  10. 2022InstructGPT Turning pointGPT-4 built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  11. 2022Chain of thought Turning pointConstitutional AI was influenced by thisChapter 12. Thinking longer
  12. 2021HHH assistantHH-RLHF built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  13. 2021FLANInstructGPT was influenced by thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  14. 2020RLHF for summarisation Turning pointInstructGPT built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  15. 2020GPT-3 Turning pointInstructGPT built directly on this
    GPT-3.5 built directly on this    Chapter 5. Scale becomes a science
  16. 2020Scaling laws Turning pointGPT-4 built directly on thisChapter 5. Scale becomes a science
  17. 2019T5 Turning pointFLAN was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  18. 2019C4 Turning pointT5 was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  19. 2019RLHF for LMsRLHF for summarisation built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  20. 2019Sparse Transformer Turning pointGPT-3 built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  21. 2019GPT-2 Turning pointScaling laws was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  22. 2019WebTextGPT-2 was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  23. 2018BERT Turning pointT5 was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  24. 2018SentencePieceT5 built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  25. 2018GPT-1GPT-2 built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  26. 2018ELMoBERT was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  27. 2018ULMFiTBERT was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  28. 2017CoVeELMo was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  29. 2017RLHF originConstitutional AI was influenced by thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  30. 2017Transformer Turning pointScaling laws built directly on thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  31. 2016Layer normTransformer built directly on this
    GPT-2 built directly on this    Chapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  32. 2015Residual connectionsTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  33. 2015LM pretraining Turning pointGPT-1 was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  34. 2015BPE tokenizationGPT-2 built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  35. 2015Luong attentionTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  36. 2014AdamTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  37. 2014GloVeELMo built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  38. 2014Seq2seq Turning pointTransformer built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  39. 2014Attention Turning pointTransformer built directly on thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  40. 2014GRU / encoder-decoderAttention built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  41. 2013word2vecELMo was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  42. 2011NLP from scratchELMo was influenced by thisChapter 1. Language as probability
  43. 2003Neural LMNLP from scratch was influenced by this
    word2vec was influenced by this    Chapter 1. Language as probability
  44. 1997LSTM Turning pointSeq2seq built directly on thisChapter 1. Language as probability
  45. 1990Recurrent networksLSTM was influenced by thisChapter 1. Language as probability
  1. 2024Computer useThis milestone.
  2. 2024Claude 3.5 SonnetComputer use built directly on thisChapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  3. 2024Claude 3Claude 3.5 Sonnet built directly on thisChapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  4. 2023GPT-4VComputer use was influenced by thisChapter 11. Seeing and hearing
  5. 2023Function callingComputer use was influenced by this (indirect influence)Chapter 13. Models that act
  6. 2023GPT-4 Turning pointGPT-4V built directly on thisChapter 7. The assistant goes public
  7. 2023ClaudeClaude 3 built directly on thisChapter 7. The assistant goes public
  8. 2023ToolformerFunction calling was influenced by this (indirect influence)Chapter 13. Models that act
  9. 2022Constitutional AIClaude 3 built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  10. 2022GPT-3.5 Turning pointGPT-4 succeeded thisChapter 7. The assistant goes public
  11. 2022ReActFunction calling was influenced by this (indirect influence)Chapter 13. Models that act
  12. 2022HH-RLHFConstitutional AI built directly on this
    Claude was influenced by this    Chapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  13. 2022InstructGPT Turning pointGPT-4 built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  14. 2022Chain of thought Turning pointReAct built directly on thisChapter 12. Thinking longer
  15. 2021WebGPTReAct was influenced by this
    Toolformer was influenced by this    Chapter 13. Models that act
  16. 2021HHH assistantHH-RLHF built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  17. 2021FLANInstructGPT was influenced by thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  18. 2021CLIPGPT-4V was influenced by this (indirect influence)Chapter 11. Seeing and hearing
  19. 2020Vision TransformerCLIP built directly on thisChapter 11. Seeing and hearing
  20. 2020RLHF for summarisation Turning pointInstructGPT built directly on this
    WebGPT built directly on this    Chapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  21. 2020GPT-3 Turning pointToolformer built directly on thisChapter 5. Scale becomes a science
  22. 2020Scaling laws Turning pointGPT-4 built directly on thisChapter 5. Scale becomes a science
  23. 2019T5 Turning pointFLAN was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  24. 2019C4 Turning pointT5 was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  25. 2019RLHF for LMsRLHF for summarisation built directly on thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  26. 2019Sparse Transformer Turning pointGPT-3 built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  27. 2019GPT-2 Turning pointCLIP built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  28. 2019WebTextGPT-2 was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  29. 2019Transformer-XLSparse Transformer was influenced by this (indirect influence)Chapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  30. 2018BERT Turning pointVision Transformer was influenced by thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  31. 2018SentencePieceT5 built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  32. 2018GPT-1GPT-2 built directly on thisChapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  33. 2018ELMoBERT was influenced by this
    GPT-1 was influenced by this (indirect influence)    Chapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  34. 2018ULMFiTBERT was influenced by this
    GPT-1 was influenced by this (indirect influence)    Chapter 4. Pretrain once, use everywhere
  35. 2017CoVeELMo was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  36. 2017RLHF originConstitutional AI was influenced by thisChapter 6. Teaching models what people want
  37. 2017Transformer Turning pointGPT-2 built directly on this
    Scaling laws built directly on this
    Vision Transformer built directly on this    Chapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  38. 2017ConvS2STransformer was influenced by this (indirect influence)Chapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  39. 2016Layer normGPT-2 built directly on thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  40. 2015Residual connectionsTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  41. 2015LM pretraining Turning pointBERT was influenced by this
    GPT-1 was influenced by this    Chapter 2. Words become vectors
  42. 2015BPE tokenizationGPT-2 built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  43. 2015Luong attentionTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  44. 2014AdamTransformer was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  45. 2014GloVeELMo built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  46. 2014Seq2seq Turning pointTransformer built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  47. 2014Attention Turning pointTransformer built directly on thisChapter 3. Attention, then only attention
  48. 2014GRU / encoder-decoderAttention built directly on thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  49. 2013word2vecELMo was influenced by thisChapter 2. Words become vectors
  50. 2011NLP from scratchELMo was influenced by thisChapter 1. Language as probability
  51. 2003Neural LMNLP from scratch was influenced by this
    word2vec was influenced by this    Chapter 1. Language as probability
  52. 1997LSTM Turning pointSeq2seq built directly on this
    ELMo built directly on this    Chapter 1. Language as probability
  53. 1990Recurrent networksLSTM was influenced by thisChapter 1. Language as probability

After: what it led to

Computer use has 1 documented descendants across 1 chapter, reaching forward to Claude Code in 2025. Showing all of them.

Computer use has 1 documented descendants across 1 chapter, reaching forward to Claude Code in 2025. Showing all of them.

Computer use has 14 recorded descendants, including indirect ones, across 3 chapters, reaching forward to GPT-5.6 Sol in 2026. Showing its direct descendants.

Computer use has 14 recorded descendants, including indirect ones, across 3 chapters, reaching forward to GPT-5.6 Sol in 2026. Showing all of them.

  1. 2024Computer useThis milestone.
  2. 2025Claude Codewas influenced by Computer useChapter 13. Models that act
  1. 2024Computer useThis milestone.
  2. 2024Gemini 2.0was influenced by Computer use (indirect influence)Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  3. 2025Claude Codewas influenced by Computer useChapter 13. Models that act
  4. 2025Gemini 2.5built directly on Gemini 2.0Chapter 12. Thinking longer
  5. 2025IMO goldbuilt directly on Gemini 2.5Chapter 12. Thinking longer
  6. 2025IMO-ProofBenchwas influenced by IMO goldChapter 12. Thinking longer
  7. 2025Gemini 3built directly on Gemini 2.5Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  8. 2026GPT-5.3-Codexwas influenced by Computer use (indirect influence)Chapter 13. Models that act
  9. 2026Gemini 3 Deep Thinkbuilt directly on Gemini 3
    was influenced by IMO gold    Chapter 12. Thinking longer
  10. 2026Gemini 3.1built directly on Gemini 3Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  11. 2026GPT-5.4built directly on GPT-5.3-CodexChapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  12. 2026Project Glasswingwas influenced by Computer use (indirect influence)Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  13. 2026GPT-5.5built directly on GPT-5.4Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  14. 2026Fable 5 / Mythos 5was influenced by Project GlasswingChapter 14. Where the threads meet now
  15. 2026GPT-5.6 Solbuilt directly on GPT-5.5Chapter 14. Where the threads meet now

Direct links and their sources

Where it came from

Built directly on

Influenced by

What it led to

Influenced