Why it matters: This doesn't mean that bots have busted free of the chat box to run loose on the desktop and in the browser -- but that day looks much closer, and increasingly inevitable.

State of play: Anthropic's "computer use" lets developers and advanced users tell Claude to go off and do things that make use of other applications on a computer -- like collecting data from the web and moving it into a spreadsheet, or building, deploying and debugging a new website from scratch.

Experts and insiders both foresee a massive multiplier effect in knowledge work as AI keeps adding new abilities.

Yes, but: Anthropic isn't letting Claude go crazy on your laptop or phone in the wild quite yet.

A "beta release" and an "experiment" is how Anthropic is describing the computer use feature.

Also, it's not free -- there's a meter running.

Between the lines: Anthropic's announcement stole a march on its competition at OpenAI, which is also believed to be working on similar technology.

Our thought bubble: The move suggests a growing agreement between the two firms, despite their rivalry, that the best way to make AI safe is to get it in front of developers and the public quickly to find out how to improve it.

The bottom line: Two years ago AI providers were insistent that for safety and quality control it was vital to "keep humans in the loop" -- but the loop is already beginning to squeeze humans out.