Insight: Race towards 'autonomous' AI agents grips Silicon Valley
Technology
Insight: Race towards 'autonomous' AI agents grips Silicon Valley
(Reuters) - Around a decade after virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa burst onto the scene, a new wave of AI helpers with greater autonomy is raising the stakes, powered by the latest version of the technology behind ChatGPT and its rivals.
Experimental systems that run on GPT-4 or similar models are attracting billions of dollars of investment as Silicon Valley competes to capitalize on the advances in AI. The new assistants - often called "agents" or "copilots" - promise to perform more complex personal and work tasks when commanded to by a human, without needing close supervision.
"High level, we want this to become something like your personal AI friend," said developer Div Garg, whose company MultiOn is beta-testing an AI agent.
"It could evolve into Jarvis, where we want this to be connected to a lot of your services," he added, referring to Tony Stark's indispensable AI in the Iron Man films. "If you want to do something, you go talk to your AI and it does your things."
The industry is still far from emulating science fiction's dazzling digital assistants; Garg's agent browses the web to order a burger on DoorDash, for example, while others can create investment strategies, email people selling refrigerators on Craigslist or summarize work meetings for those who join late.
"Lots of what's easy for people is still incredibly hard for computers," said Kanjun Qiu, CEO of Generally Intelligent, an OpenAI competitor creating AI for agents.
"Say your boss needs you to schedule a meeting with a group of important clients. That involves reasoning skills that are complex for AI - it needs to get everyone's preferences, resolve conflicts, all while maintaining the careful touch needed when working with clients."
