💻 OpenAI Just Got A Whole Lot More Powerful

OpenAI announces plugins.

Big deal.

SmokeBot will be on vacation next week, so we’ll resume our send schedule in April.

Enjoy.

OpenAI Announces Plug-ins for ChatGPT❗️ 

The big knock on ChatGPT, before very recently, was that it knew a lot of stuff about life in 2021 and before but nothing about the present day.

That’s over. OpenAI filled that hole the old-fashioned way, with plug-ins.

Hyperbole tends to follow every new AI development. SmokeBot is occasionally guilty of that, but in this instance please trust that this particular advancement means something.

• OpenAI is adding plug-in support to ChatGPT, allowing the bot to browse the web and interact with specific websites.

• This expands ChatGPT's capabilities beyond its training data, potentially turning it into a wide-ranging interface for various services and sites.

• The plug-ins will allow other services to be ChatGPT's "eyes and ears" and provide it with live data from the web.

• Initially, there are 11 plug-ins for external sites, including Expedia, OpenTable, Kayak, Klarna Shopping, and Zapier.

• OpenAI is also providing some plug-ins of its own, one for interpreting code and one called "Browsing" that lets ChatGPT get information from the internet.

• The plug-ins can tie into APIs, allowing ChatGPT to "perform actions on behalf of the user."

• OpenAI has implemented several safeguards to address safety and security concerns, including limiting the availability of plug-ins to a small number of people to start.

This development is younger than infants resting in OB wards around the world, but already it’s easy to see where we go from here.

When ChatGPT was limited to data extant from 2021 backward, it was walking. Now it’s running.

Bing and the other wannabes are still in stroll mode, going to the internet to find information (some of it outdated) and spitting out a guess.

Comparatively, these live business plug-ins let ChatGPT access real time data from these corporate websites and applications to make hyper-speed decisions in the consumer’s favor.

Short on time and need to book a Caribbean vacation to assuage an aggrieved spouse? Ask ChatGPT to price out vacation itineraries.

Your spouse says at 3:00 p.m. that her book club is coming to the house for dinner and the refrigerator is empty? Instruct ChatGPT to either fill and deliver a grocery order or have OpenTable send them all to a bistro.

It’s also not that far a stretch to imagine some of the things ChatGPT will be able to do as these plugins become standard and/or just get built into the platform.

Taylor Swift tickets are going on sale at 10:00 a.m.? Great, I’ll time a ChatGPT query for 9:57:23 a.m. to buy four aisle seats with a maximum price point.

My sister was served divorce papers by her loser husband from a notoriously scummy law firm?” “ChatGPT, what percentage of (X law firm) divorce cases settle?”

We will need a week or two to see where these plug-ins take us, but we cannot wait to get there.

Character.AI, a Startup Founded by Two Former Google Employees, Posts $1B Valuation 🤑 

At this point it’s pretty clear that the fastest path for a broke super-intelligent person to make a billion dollars is AI, as long as that person got into the game like two years ago.

There is no better proof of this premise than a pair of ex-Google employees (Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas) landing $150 million in funding for Character.AI despite Google being demonstrably and inexcusably behind the AI curve.

“Poised to compete with OpenAI” seems pretty presumptuous. Meta isn’t there. Google itself isn’t there.

But OK, we’ll humor this premise for the sake of posterity.

• Character.AI, founded by two former Google employees, has raised $150 million in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz at a $1 billion valuation.

• The company's technology allows users to create a fully-customizable and personalized AI companion with a distinct personality and values.

• Character.AI plans to use the fresh capital to expand its computing abilities and to add technical abilities, as well as to grow its team.

• The 10-figure valuation for a reportedly pre-revenue company is reminiscent of other hyped technologies like crypto and social audio.

• Investors in Character.AI include former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, Elad Gil, A Capital, and SV Angel.

• The company is rapidly advancing generative AI and has the potential to transform how humans interact with technology in everyday life.

SmokeBot thinks that this report smacks of casino gamblers bowling over old ladies in wheelchairs at slot machines to get to the hot craps table. Not that there’s anything illegal about that.

Most of these investors are probably so well off that an investment in Character.AI that would cause the average shlub to lose sleep at night is just another leverage play.

And who’s to say these investors are wrong? On current information, many of these generative AI/personal assistant bot/data-driven Messiahs look and act the same.

The investors in the ones that grab market share will profit the most, as always.

Nobody who got in on Coca-Cola in 1919 went broke.

Headlines 📰 

Penn State researchers design AI tool to protect low-income renters from eviction: The researchers devised two separate models that “aim to forecast where and how many renters could be at risk of eviction to help better inform policymaking and resource allocation” 🏠️ 

It’s unconfirmed, but Midjourney may have blocked creators of fake Trump arrest images: Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins alleged to Buzzfeed that Midjourney banned Higgins from the image creation platform after the fake Trump arrest portrayals went viral. Imagine what they might do with NSFW AI generators. 🛑 

ABC News report describes man falling in love with female AI avatar: “But don’t fall in love!” It’s fine to turn to AI to guide you through life’s occasional bumps and bruises, but when your inclination is to tell a bot called Sarina that you love her, it’s time to step away from the laptop 👀 

Links 👀

• We many never know the weight of the solar system, but AI is honing in on the weight of galaxy clusters, so who knows 🌃 

• Nvidia stock continues to surge after the company announced plans to help businesses launch their own large language and AI models 📈 

• Leave it to The New York Times to reach back into mythology and call the discovery and widespread use of AI our “new Promethean moment” 🔥 

• Positivity around AI is scarce these days, but no right-thinking person could dislike the idea that AI can improve the lives of the sight-impaired 👍️