ChatGPT Agent: AI with a To-Do List

What is ChatGPT Agent? 

Traditional ChatGPT (and other chatbots) excel at generating text and answering questions within the confines of the conversation. You ask, it answers – end of story.

ChatGPT agent is a version of ChatGPT that has agency… meaning it can reason, plan steps, call tools or APIs, access files, and make decisions based on instructions. It is a smart assistant that not only understands your request but also figures out how to complete the task using multiple steps.

You can assign it roles (e.g., "email responder," "market researcher," "Excel helper"), give it access to tools or your files, and it will learn to complete tasks based on that setup.

What Can a ChatGPT Agent Do?

ChatGPT Agent is remarkably versatile. During demonstrations, it has shown it can:

• Manage Schedules and Plans: For example, it can look at your Google Calendar to find open slots and then coordinate with external services. If you ask for a “date night plan for next week,” the agent could scan your calendar for a free evening, then search OpenTable for restaurant reservations, even book a slot that fits your cuisine preferences.
• Research and Report: The agent can perform deep-dive research on a topic by searching the web, reading articles, and compiling a summary or report. One demo had the agent research a niche topic (like comparing two obscure collectible trends) and produce a coherent report, complete with references.
• Online Shopping and Booking: Users have tried tasks like ordering groceries online via the agent. It can navigate to a grocery website, search for items on a list, add them to a cart, and proceed to checkout (stopping short of final payment, unless given approval)..
• Content Creation and Productivity: Because it can use tools, ChatGPT Agent might open a document editor and help draft a slide presentation or compile data from various sources. OpenAI even demonstrated it creating a slide deck about competing companies – the agent browsed information about those companies, then organized key points into a presentation format.

How Does It Work Under the Hood?

OpenAI built ChatGPT Agent by combining two experimental projects they had developed earlier: 

• one codenamed Operator (which was an AI that could control a web browser and interact with web pages)
• and another called Deep Research (which focused on analyzing data and writing detailed reports). 

The new ChatGPT Agent essentially merges these capabilities. It runs on a specialized version of their GPT-4 model that has been further trained (using techniques like reinforcement learning) to handle the kind of multi-step thinking and tool-use that agents require.

When you give ChatGPT Agent a task, the AI breaks it down into smaller sub-tasks. Suppose you say, “Help me buy a gift for my friend’s birthday next week.” The agent might internally break this down as:

1. Clarify details (it might ask you a follow-up about your friend’s interests or your budget).
2. Search for gift ideas given those interests.
3. If needed, check dates for delivery to ensure it arrives before the birthday.
4. Compare a few products or find a recommended item.
5. Go to an online store, add the item to cart.
6. Possibly proceed to checkout and then ask you for final approval to purchase.

Each of these steps might involve using different “tools” like a web search tool, a shopping site interface, a calendar, etc. ChatGPT Agent’s “brain” is trained to know how to juggle these tools and when to use which. It’s a bit like an orchestra conductor coordinating various instruments (browser, calendar, APIs, etc.) to fulfill the symphony of your request.

One fascinating aspect is that the agent has a form of a virtual computer. It means it’s not limited to just scraping text from the web – it can, for instance, open up a Python interpreter to do a quick calculation or interact with a simulated keyboard and mouse on web pages. This gives it a breadth of action that previous AI assistants didn’t have.

Staying Safe and In Control

With great power comes great responsibility, and OpenAI is well aware that giving an AI the keys to act online has risks. ChatGPT Agent has a number of safety features and limitations built in:

• Permission for Critical Actions: If an agent is about to do something irreversible or sensitive – say, sending an email on your behalf or making a purchase – it will pause and explicitly ask for your confirmation. You wouldn’t want it firing off messages or spending money unless you say it’s okay.
• Sensitive Data Handling: For tasks like logging into accounts or entering payment info, the agent can hand back control to you temporarily (in what OpenAI calls “takeover mode”) so you enter credentials securely. The AI doesn’t actually see or store your passwords or credit card details; it just knows to wait until that step is done.
• Restricted Domains: Certain activities are off-limits. For example, OpenAI initially restricted financial transactions and any actions in areas like banking. If the agent strays onto a banking site or something with high-stakes consequences, it might either stop or switch to a watchful mode requiring you to supervise closely.
• Monitoring and Stopgaps: The system also includes monitors that watch the agent’s behavior for anything suspicious or errors. If it looks like it’s stuck in a loop or being led astray by a tricky website, it can pause or stop.

It’s worth noting that early users of ChatGPT Agent have found it much slower than normal ChatGPT responses. This is expected – if you ask it to do a complex task like book travel, it might spend several minutes clicking through pages, reading details, comparing options, etc.

You’re essentially waiting for it to do work that might take you 15-20 minutes; the AI might accomplish it in, say, 5 minutes. It feels slow compared to a regular chatbot answer, but it’s doing a lot more.

OpenAI suggests these agent tasks are things you might kick off and let run in the background, rather than expecting an instant answer.

The Road Ahead for AI Agents

While ChatGPT Agent is transformative, it’s still early days. It’s available to a limited set of users (at the time of its debut, OpenAI rolled it out to Pro/Plus subscribers in the U.S., with plans to expand to enterprise users later). The technology will undoubtedly improve, becoming faster and able to handle even more elaborate tasks.

In the future, we might see specialized AI agents: one tuned for medical assistance (imagine scheduling doctor appointments, refilling prescriptions), another for finance (managing bills, investments within safe bounds), and so on. For now, ChatGPT Agent is a generalist, showing us what’s possible.

One thing is certain: the line between “searching for something” and “doing something” is blurring. With AI agents like ChatGPT Agent, we won’t just get answers from our computers – we’ll get actions. It’s an exciting development that could save us time and effort, as long as it’s done with the right safety guardrails. OpenAI’s ChatGPT Agent is one of the first big leaps in that direction, turning the concept of a helpful AI sidekick from science fiction into reality.