I originally posted the following to “GPT World”. GPT World is a newsletter for business leaders, forward thinkers and non-technical people interested in the intersection of AI, sociology, business and careers.
I’m sharing this because the rapid evolution of AI is profoundly important to wealth creation (and destruction). It will affect your employment, business and investments.
We are sprinting head-first towards the greatest challenge and opportunity ever faced by humans.
ChatGPT and other generative AI rely on user prompts to perform actions. Text, images, documents, etc. All built quickly by giving instructions or asking questions.
It is like having a robot personal assistant at your side that awaits your instructions. After completing one task it stands by and awaits your next instruction.
For example, each of the following might be a single prompt used to generate an output:
Write a poem about a cat chasing a mouse
Create a black ink drawing of a cat chasing a mouse as it runs into a hole in the wall
Explain the evolutionary biology driving a mouse to run away from a cat
These early use cases for generative AI are amazing, but what’s happening now is mind-blowing.
Introducing Auto GPT.
What is Auto GPT?
Auto GPT adds more creative problem solving and independence (and, dare I say, tenacity) to generative AI. Using GPT4 as the foundation, programmers have built digital ‘agents’ that can complete more complex multi-step projects autonomously.
You essentially give the agent a project and a set of parameters to work within and it runs off to do it.
The difference between ChatGPT and Auto GPT
ChatGPT is like hiring an inexperienced 14 year old to help out with tasks at the office. They can get things done, but are single-task oriented.
Tell them to file papers in alphabetical order and they’ll do it. Ask them to provide a list of US presidents going back to 1970 and they’ll do it. But ask them to develop a new efficient process for collecting, categorizing, storing and leveraging client information and they’ll get stuck.
Auto GPT is like hiring an experienced, problem-solving project manager. Unlike the inexperienced 14 year old, Auto GPT can be given a project that it will break down into steps. It will refine and clarify those steps and eventually find a way to build a solution. Moreover, Auto GPT can evaluate its own work and alter its problem-solving strategies to refine the solution.
Where does Auto GPT come from?
“Auto GPT” was created by a single developer. However, the name can be generically applied to any of the numerous autonomous AI agents being developed off the back of Chat GPT and sources of data, like the internet.
This is the wild west of AI so there are thousands of people independently creating their own specialized agents. Some might be purpose-built, perhaps focused on a particular type of project. Others might have more generalized applications.
Considering GPT 4 was just released in March 2023 and we’re already seeing Auto GPTs I can only imagine how far we’ll be by next year.
Below is an example of how someone used Auto GPT: