We've been saying it (sometimes literally*) for quite a while, chatbots are not the be-all and end-all of artificial intelligence.
From The Conversation, December 18:
Interacting with AI chatbots like ChatGPT can be fun and sometimes useful, but the next level of everyday AI goes beyond answering questions: AI agents carry out tasks for you.
....MUCH MOREMajor technology companies, including OpenAI, Microsoft, Google and Salesforce, have recently released or announced plans to develop and release AI agents. They claim these innovations will bring newfound efficiency to technical and administrative processes underlying systems used in health care, robotics, gaming and other businesses.
Simple AI agents can be taught to reply to standard questions sent over email. More advanced ones can book airline and hotel tickets for transcontinental business trips. Google recently demonstrated Project Mariner to reporters, a browser extension for Chrome that can reason about the text and images on your screen.
In the demonstration, the agent helped plan a meal by adding items to a shopping cart on a grocery chain’s website, even finding substitutes when certain ingredients were not available. A person still needs to be involved to finalize the purchase, but the agent can be instructed to take all of the necessary steps up to that point.
In a sense, you are an agent. You take actions in your world every day in response to things that you see, hear and feel. But what exactly is an AI agent? As a computer scientist, I offer this definition: AI agents are technological tools that can learn a lot about a given environment, and then – with a few simple prompts from a human – work to solve problems or perform specific tasks in that environment.
Rules and goals
A smart thermostat is an example of a very simple agent. Its ability to perceive its environment is limited to a thermometer that tells it the temperature. When the temperature in a room dips below a certain level, the smart thermostat responds by turning up the heat....
AI: Chatbots Are Sooo 2023; Here Comes Interactive AI
"ChatBots Are Not The Be-All And End-All Of Artificial Intelligence":
Far from it.
And all the focus on ChatBots and LLMs are more than just a distraction, they are a perverse representation of what AI is doing and will do and could potentially cost you money or opportunity or both....
ChatBots Are For Children: "What’s Ahead for OpenAI? Project Strawberry, Orion, and GPT Next"
IEEE Spectrum - "What Are AI Agents?"
"First impressions of ChatGPT o1: An AI designed to overthink it"
CoinTelegraph has developed an artisanal, homebrew AI specialty. Here's one of our previous visits:
AI Use Case: Biological Immortality By 2030This would be a pretty good answer to the question "What is the use case for AI?"But I don't buy it. AI will be like the nanotech revolution that never was, never that is, in the sense of a nanotech industry. Instead, as with nanotech, AI will be embedded in the processes and protocols of every facet of human existence and we won't even notice it.
"AI agents are the 'next frontier' and will change our working lives forever"
Former Google CEO Schmidt On The Ever-Increasing Tempo Of AI
Also:
Where Is Artificial Intelligence Going From Here: One Of The Gurus Speaks
