OpenAI's new design force, future of AI interfaces, ChatGPT plugins for accountants

In Focus

The future of AI user interfaces

• This intriguing Fast Company article discusses different founders’ perspectives on the future of AI design and how we are likely to interact with this technology in the future.
• There’s a growing divide on whether chatbots in their current, text-based, format are an outdated interface to use AI or whether it needs a radical upgrade (think mobile phones before the iPhone), in order to gain mass adoption.
• While most agree that a user-friendly design that enhance efficiency in everyday life for most people is crucial for AI to gain mass adoption, there’s little consensus of what this would actually look like.
• I believe our imagination for interfaces remains very limited at this point by the current applications we have seen. Here’s a quote from the article which struck with me:

“Metaphors that you take for granted, like touch, swiping, pinch—whatever—take on new meanings in generative AI,” says Yuan. “Zooming means you want more or less detail on something, right? So how does that get applied to a chunk of text?”

- Jason Yuan in an interview with Fast Company (Aug 16 2023)

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Dario’s Picks 

• OpenAI acquires Global Illumination in its first public acquisition – a design studio with team members that built early products at Instagram and Facebook. This definitely sounds like a step in the right direction; my impression from following the community around OpenAI for the last few months is that they have great technology and a large user base, but a lot of room for improvement in terms of interfaces and design – both on the dev and consumer side.
• Using GPT-4 for content moderation. I was excited to see this blog post from OpenAI describe a specific process on how GPT-4 can be used for content moderation at scale. This is a costly expense for so many enterprises and typically requires a lot of man-hours, so this is a potential use case which could take chatbots one step closer to a more profitable/sustainable business model. This is particularly relevant as a recent report found that OpenAI could be headed for bankruptcy as early as 2024 unless they find a way to balance the extreme costs associated with operating ChatGPT.
• Scientists see strong potential in ChatGPT as research tool, albeit not without challenges. The ScholarAI plugin was recently mentioned in a peer-reviewed article by researchers from Oxford University and The Imperial College of London, exploring how ChatGPT is catalyzing the evolution of cardiothoracic surgery research.

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ChatGPT plugins 

• There’s now 920 ChatGPT plugins, of which 26 were launched in the past 7 days.
• Notable launches:
• Consensus Search - Provides answers and insights directly from over 200M scientific papers, accessible by asking a research question.
• Check Point Security - Checks security reputation for IPs, URLs, File hashes, and obtains their current risk and classification.

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• Categories with most new launches:
• Online Shopping & Deals - 79 plugins (4 new)
• Entertainment - 43 plugins (4 new)
• Data & Research - 79 plugins (3 new)

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• A recent trend in the ChatGPT plugin store reveals an unusual surge in plugins named with the letter "A", a symptom of an unregulated naming culture. Developers are exploiting alphabetical sorting to gain visibility, underscoring the need for OpenAI to implement clear naming rules and better organization. Here's a graph I made (with Code Interpreter of course) to illustrate the problem:

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• Check out this video on how to use ChatGPT plugins in your day-to-day workflow. This example is for accountants, but can be easily adapted to other professions as well.

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AI Bytes & Resources

• Google’s Gemini could overtake ChatGPT due to its deep well of training data.
• Snapchat’s My AI goes rogue, posts to Stories, but Snap confirms it was just a glitch.
• Google updates to SGE: Learn as you search and browse using generative AI. Lily Ray made an easy walkthrough of the new feature (with a focus on its implications for SEO).
• GPT detectors as a whole don’t work, according to Allie K. Miller, citing a recent study from Stanford University.
• Wired’s Have a Nice Future podcast discusses how chatbots could take over the governing systems in the world in the next decade.
• Amusing, fake ChatGPT screenshot I found on Reddit.

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