The magical demos displayed the capability. Now the platform wars begin.
The chatbots did their job. They inspired awe, mockery, and even some fear. Most importantly, they drew attention. Front-page headlines, cover stories, and word of mouth caused millions to try them, leading businesses and developers to ask how they could put the technology to use.
The APIs, of course, were always the point. ChatGPT and Bing's chatbot were never the end product. They were demos meant to sell other companies on tools they could use to build their own. And it worked. Now, the war to build the leading generative AI platform is underway.
"For OpenAI, the vast majority of the money they will ever make will come from developers," Ben Parr, president of Octane AI, told me via phone Thursday. "ChatGPT is just the entry road into everything else."
[...] The APIs, amid the commotion, are what matter. They're why Microsoft was willing to release an unproven chatbot into Bing, even when it knew it was a bit crazy. And why the company didn't seem to mind when the bot's flaws exploded into public view. It was never about Bing or ChatGPT, but about the potential future they previewed. And now, given the demos' success, the race to enable that future is underway.
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Last week, Microsoft researchers announced an experimental framework to control robots and drones using the language abilities of ChatGPT, a popular AI language model created by OpenAI. Using natural language commands, ChatGPT can write special code that controls robot movements. A human then views the results and adjusts as necessary until the task gets completed successfully.
The research arrived in a paper titled "ChatGPT for Robotics: Design Principles and Model Abilities," authored by Sai Vemprala, Rogerio Bonatti, Arthur Bucker, and Ashish Kapoor of the Microsoft Autonomous Systems and Robotics Group.
In a demonstration video, Microsoft shows robots—apparently controlled by code written by ChatGPT while following human instructions—using a robot arm to arrange blocks into a Microsoft logo, flying a drone to inspect the contents of a shelf, or finding objects using a robot with vision capabilities.
To get ChatGPT to interface with robotics, the researchers taught ChatGPT a custom robotics API. When given instructions like "pick up the ball," ChatGPT can generate robotics control code just as it would write a poem or complete an essay. After a human inspects and edits the code for accuracy and safety, the human operator can execute the task and evaluate its performance.
In this way, ChatGPT accelerates robotic control programming, but it's not an autonomous system. "We emphasize that the use of ChatGPT for robotics is not a fully automated process," reads the paper, "but rather acts as a tool to augment human capacity."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by pvanhoof on Monday February 27, @07:50AM (2 children)
Good, can' t wait for 90% of the current helpdesk people to be replaced by an AI with an API. We just need to type the word Shibboleet [xkcd.com] to bypass it.
(Score: 5, Funny) by pvanhoof on Monday February 27, @07:59AM (1 child)
Hmm. It almost works. Here is my attempted chat with that ChatGPT one:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27, @05:28PM
God, I can't stand the verbiage. Shut the fuck computer. I only want one word answers from you: Competed or Failed. For everything else, I can call my mom and get 40 minutes of complaining about whatever issues are on her mind.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by shrewdsheep on Monday February 27, @12:12PM
.. which probably means SaaS. Getting developers using a SaaS allows a rent-seeking business model to be run. This assumes that there are only a few players in the market and models stay as large as they are throwing up a barrier to entry. IMHO "compressed" models will soon be available and on par with models like ChatGPT. It remains to be seen whether every startup can be bought up by Google/M$/...
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27, @06:22PM (1 child)
It's all about open source, so you can run it yourself locally without spying and not have it lobotomized by a corporation in the name of ethics.
(Score: 2) by The Vocal Minority on Tuesday February 28, @03:48AM
Good luck running a model the size of ChatGPT on your desktop. We got lucky with Stable Diffusion, as long as you don't mind the extra limbs.
(Score: 2) by corey on Monday February 27, @09:56PM
“Money, money, money” dept.