titleFrom Chatbot to Digital Colleague: The Paradigm Shift Toward Persistent Autonomous AI
authorsYongheng Zhang, Ziang Liu, Jiaxuan Zhu, Shuai Wang, Xiangqi Chen, Haojing Huang, Jiayi Kuang, Siyu Chen, Ao Shen, Hao Wu, Qiufeng Wang, Qian-Wen Zhang, Junnan Dong, Wenhao Jiang, Ying Shen, Hai-Tao Zheng, Yinghui Li, Di Yin, Xing Sun, Philip S. Yu
date2026-06-12
venuearXiv (preprint, not peer reviewed)
idarXiv:2606.14502
affiliationTencent
upvotes62 (Hugging Face Daily Papers, 2026-11-01)
linksabs pdf hf
abstractLarge Language Models (LLMs) are undergoing a fundamental transformation from conversational generators into integrated AI systems capable of reasoning, action, memory, and self-improvement. We conceptualize this transition as a shift from Chatbot to Digital Colleague: from conversational answers to persistent work. We organize this transition along two tightly coupled dimensions. First, at the cognitive core level, LLMs are advancing from Chatbot-era "fast thinking" systems driven by next-token prediction toward Thinking LLMs that leverage inference-time computation, Chain-of-Thought reasoning, reflection, process supervision, and reinforcement learning to support more deliberate and reliable cognition. Second, at the tool-augmented task execution level, LLMs are progressing from tool-calling Agents that invoke external resources in an ad hoc manner toward OpenClaw-style workstation systems (OpenClaw) equipped with persistent Workspaces, skills, verification loops, and governance. The "Workspace + Skill" paradigm makes episodic tool use colleague-like via state persistence, reusable procedures, task closure, and experience reuse. We examine data construction shifts from instruction-response pairs to State-Action-Observation trajectories and evaluation from static benchmarks to sandboxed, auditable, self-evolving AI ecosystems.

cite

@misc{zhang2026from,
  title={From Chatbot to Digital Colleague: The Paradigm Shift Toward Persistent Autonomous AI},
  author={Yongheng Zhang and Ziang Liu and Jiaxuan Zhu and Shuai Wang and Xiangqi Chen and Haojing Huang and Jiayi Kuang and Siyu Chen and Ao Shen and Hao Wu and Qiufeng Wang and Qian-Wen Zhang and Junnan Dong and Wenhao Jiang and Ying Shen and Hai-Tao Zheng and Yinghui Li and Di Yin and Xing Sun and Philip S. Yu},
  year={2026},
  eprint={2606.14502},
  archivePrefix={arXiv},
  url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.14502}
}