OpenAI Plugins Change ChatGPT - Tech Insiders News, March 2023
Welcome to the Digital Explorers' Diary #32!
A curated collection of thought-provoking topics about interactive technologies, AI, web3, sense-making, entrepreneurship, and psychology.
A bright future for AI/AR Apps!
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is not slowing down. This week, they announced their new framework: plugins. Boring? No, this is an even bigger revolution than the release of GPT-4 two weeks ago. Currently, ChatGPT is blind to the present moment: it is trained on information up to September 2021.
Plugins will change that: they will give eyes and hands to ChatGPT by allowing it to access other services’ APIs. (An API is a way to expose a service to developers, accessible through code.)
Imagine the use cases!
The UberEats ChatGPT plugin will allow you to say, «Please find food for two persons that can be delivered in less than 45 minutes; we like it spicy, and one of us is allergic to peanuts.» ChatGPT will reply with a set of choices, and here is your meal!
How about a calendar plugin? «Please book a meeting with such and such on any morning next week, and select a cafe that is not too noisy so we can work.» Here again, a set of choices to select from, and done!
Coming back from a day out? Use the Photos plugin: «Select all the pictures from today’s trip that show the kids and send them to grandma!»
Travel booking? Professional networking interfaced with a CRM? Banking? Trading? News? You name it; every field will have its plugin.
But I don’t like the name «plugin.»
Let’s name them «apps.»
Isn’t it a better way to think about these plugins? The apps that you are currently using are built upon code; these will be built upon AI. And you won’t even have to search between the 12 screens on your phone; ChatGPT will select it for you automatically, depending on your request. This is the eve of the general, all-purpose assistant that Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home failed to create: brace yourself for having ChatGPT as the only «real» application to install, and be able to choose your favorite plugins apps to interact with.
And that is a perfect segway to another concept: Augmented Reality Apps. With the democratization of AR Glasses and headsets, you will be able to install apps on your objects!
Imagine: in your new house, the stores are electric; you ask your digital assistant for an app to control them. By looking at the stores through your AR glasses, it can detect the brand; check their website for a controller app; download and install it; and here it is, you can control them from your glasses.
Which app would you want to be built?
An AR App for your plants, so you know exactly when to take care of them? For your oven or your car?
Is it what Apple will bring in with their new headset that is supposed to be announced in June? That would make sense, as a big part of their business is on apps…
The other side of the coin
I can’t release this article without a word of caution. Technology is not values neutral. There is a huge hype going on at the moment on AI, and most of the discussions are around its amazing capabilities.
There is not enough talk about the impacts on society, its limitations, and how to regulate it. A huge shift is coming: ways of working and living will evolve. The power balance between individuals, companies, and governments will shift. We’re not ready; we cannot adapt fast enough to AI’s exponential growth.
I’m saying it again: we need to slow things down. I’m concerned by the alarming number of people I talk to who are starting to worry about their future.
Let’s not surrender to unhealthy competition; let’s focus on the individuals and our society’s wellness first.
In other news
Snapchat is expanding its offer to businesses with ARES (AR Enterprise Services).
- It’s a set of tools dedicated to businesses with an emphasis on e-commerce: fitting, AR try-on (Clothes, eyewear, and shoes), and 3D viewer.
- It’s a clever move, probably to compensate for their loss in ad revenue.
- Also note that these services are not delivered through the Snapchat application but directly on the brand’s website, app, or in-store.
Last week was Nvidia’s annual conference; many things were discussed, and the extended partnership with Microsft to expand the “Industrial Metaverse“ is what caught my attention.
- What is the Industrial Metaverse anyway? Put simply; it’s the next digital transformation step. The current step is to bring everyone into the cloud; the next is to bring everyone into a virtual, real-time world synched to the real world.
From the podcast
I’ve been teaming up with Guillaume Brincin and Sébastien Spas on the Lost In Immersion podcast. This week:
- We discuss the market share between headsets and browsers to access «Metaverse» and agree that headsets bring more immersion but browsers less friction. Dive deeper here.
- Is the technology ready for use cases of Augmented Reality for construction work/BIM and industry? Not yet. What does the future of this look like? Very promising, increasing effectiveness and safety.
- Google ended Google Glass sales; we dive back in time and remember the rise and fall of AR glasses, recalling the hype and frenzy around them in 2015-2016 when numerous manufacturers announced devices. Some of them remain relevant today, including HoloLens, and Magic Leap. We agreed on the importance of timing and meeting user expectations in the launch and success of such technologies.