Photo by Nicolas Economou
Happy birthday, ChatGPT!
It’s been a year since the intelligent chatbot went viral, stealing hearts South Park and trigger an investment boom unprecedented since the birth of the iPhone.
Now voice enabled, users can talk with it and even ask it to create custom GPTs that can be sold on the GPT store, that is, once the store is actually launched.
Announced during OpenAI DevDay on November 6 with great fanfare and an appearance from Grimes, the store was supposed to be open in November but fell off the radar when OpenAI’s nonprofit board fired its CEO, Sam Altman, then blew up two interim CEOs before more than 700 of its 770 employees threatened to quit and join Microsoft with Altman. Within days, the women on the board were replaced by former Twitter Chairman Bret Taylor and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and soon Altman was once again CEO, partying with his team . Microsoft then served as a non-voting observer on the board, partly filling the void left by Microsoft board member Reid Hoffman when he left OpenAI in March. And now, Thrive Capital’s $86 billion tender offer for employee stock appears to be back on track.
OpenAI confirmed the store launch delay in a letter to GPT Builders that said: “Looking forward, we are now planning to launch the GPT Store early next year. While we had planned to release it this month, a few unexpected items kept us busy! »
Despite the SuccessionA level drama that had Silicon Valley glued to X (formerly Twitter) for days, ChatGPT remains at the forefront of the AI craze with 100 million weekly users and 2 million developers using its tools, including 92 % of Fortune 500, according to company. . It also has a robust partnership program that includes integrations with brands like Snapchat and Expedia.
As it stands, the main players in the discussion space driving much of the hype are:
Additionally, Elon Musk released Grok, a sarcastic chatbot trained on X/Twitter data, available to verified X subscribers at grok.x.ai, and Amazon offers Q, an enterprise chatbot available for a fee on AWS. amazon.com/q. . Meta is beta testing its generative AI tools in the United States on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
For image generation, while OpenAI’s DALL-E and Midjourney are now paid, users can try Runway for free at runwayml.com/ai-magic-tools/text-to-image. It also powers Canva’s video generation tools.
The road ahead
Waymo ride
Although it’s been an exciting year for generative AI, autonomous vehicles almost came to a screeching halt when Cruise lost its robotaxis operating license in San Francisco, amid several headline-grabbing incidents.
The same weekend that OpenAI descended into chaos, visionary Cruise founders and Y Combinator alums Kyle Vogt and Dan Kan handed the reins of their high-flying startup to parent company General Motors after the entire of its American fleet has been examined, including the Phoenix. , Austin, Dallas, Houston and Miami. A devastating blow, considering Vogt’s grand ambitions for the company, which he had just presented at the Dreamforce and Disrupt conferences in San Francisco a few weeks before.
But fortunately, the dream of autonomous driving is alive and well with Google’s Waymo, still operating in San Francisco and Phoenix, and soon in Los Angeles and Austin as a paid ride-sharing service. Uber is even partnering with Waymo to offer rides and deliveries on its Phoenix platform.
I drove my first Waymo in San Francisco this week and was impressed with the whole experience, from the smooth ride of its all-electric Jaguar I-PACE car to its cleanliness, spaciousness and bright interior.
Although the car did not offer door-to-door service for my route, it seemed to offer safe boarding options, selecting nearby curbside and away from traffic sites, to which the app guided me. In the darkness, I could see its “Waymo” welcome mat projected by the light, and when I opened the door, the car greeted me by name and I immediately felt at home. While he waited for me to buckle up, he gave me a quick orientation. I then pressed “start ride” and it was on its way, carefully maneuvering through traffic.
I drove in silence for a while, filming him, amazed at how diligently he drove. Then I found a great mix on the rear screen and relaxed to enjoy the ride, appreciating how safe it was not having to deal with a human driver. The cost was about $20, comparable to an Uber, before tip. The only thing missing was a fun name to call my car, like Cruise did with “Popsicle” and “Goldie.”» to make it easier to search through the crowd and encourage fans to catch them all.
I started thinking about all the potential applications of the technology, like commanding a Waymo to charge an electric car or providing backup power to a home in the event of an outage. We certainly feel like we’re at the start of something big.
With Joby and Volocopter’s flying taxis taking off, it’s been a banner year for AI and it will likely get even more exciting from here.
Update: Added OpenAI’s confirmation of GPT Store launch delay to paragraph 5