What's this about?
Jim Fan's history lesson: in 2016 OpenAI built World of Bits inside Universe — an agent staring at screen pixels, moving a mouse, booking a flight on United. It didn't work; the models weren't ready. Astra's computer use is the same idea, reincarnated.
What exactly was Universe?
OpenAI's 2016 platform for training agents on real software through the screen — pixels in, mouse and keyboard out. Abandoned as premature; the vision predated the capability by a decade.
Why is this worth noting?
The research lineage matters: computer use wasn't invented for this model generation — it waited for one. The interesting exercise is inverting it: today's "premature" failures are a decade's model progress away from being products.