Per reporter: Cai Ding Per editor: Lan Suying
Following the concept of "embodied intelligence" proposed by NVIDIA founder Huang Jenxun last week, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates also proposed a similar vision on May 22, Eastern time.
Gates said that the future of artificial intelligence personal assistants will have a profound impact. "People will never use search engines, they won't visit productivity sites, they're not going to use Amazon again." In Gates' vision, this "AI assistant" would have the ability to understand human needs and habits while helping humans "read books they don't have time to read." ”
Visual China map
The "Daily Economic News" reporter noted that Gates' remarks were not groundless. Over the past few months, several versions of OpenAI's ChatGPT have passed various difficult exams and interviews with large companies. In addition, there are already consumer goods companies that are beginning to apply artificial intelligence to users. Some brokerage analysts believe that OpenAI recently announced the lifting of the restriction that ChatGPT cannot be connected to the Internet, adding support for plug-ins for ChatGPT, which provides conditions for the emergence of artificial intelligence assistants.
AI assistants are disruptive
At the AI Forward 2023 event in San Francisco on Monday by Goldman Sachs and SV Angel, Gates argued that the ultimate winner of the current IT technology competition is top AI, which will disrupt search engines, productivity software and online shopping sites. "People will never search for websites again, and they will never go to Amazon." He said.
He also said, "I'd be disappointed if Microsoft didn't end up getting there, but I'm also impressed by the performance of some startups right now." Despite the 50 percent probability, he said, ultimately the winner of this race will be a startup. Inflection AI, an AI startup co-founded by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, impressed him.
Gates believes that it will take some time for this powerful future digital agent to evolve before it can be used in mainstream society, and until then, companies will continue to embed so-called generative artificial intelligence technology in their products, similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT.
Many industry players are working to build an AI-powered computer assistant that allows consumers to create a series of tasks via voice or text commands. In this regard, Gates believes that "whoever wins this race to become the developer of AI personal assistants is a big deal." ”
Gates also calls generative AI a "game-changer for white-collar workers," and he believes that in the future, the humanoid robots used by companies will be cheaper than human employees, so blue-collar workers will also be greatly affected.
In addition, Gates talked about his foundation's work related to artificial intelligence in the field of drug development, which he said will accelerate more advanced drug development. Although the inner workings of the human brain remain a mystery to scientists, Gates believes that humans are close to creating effective drugs to treat diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, and human trials of new drugs could be conducted within 10 years.
On the same day, the Gates Foundation also announced the launch of a "Global Grand Challenge" that will give a total of $3 million and up to $100,000 to each participating project to test new uses of AI, overcome everyday obstacles and solve many thorny problems in low- and middle-income countries.
According to the "Daily Economic News" reporter, the application deadline for this challenge is June 5, and then the funds will be allocated in July, and the subsequent challengers have 3 months to complete the project.
AI assistants have already appeared
The "Daily Economic News" reporter noted that Gates' imagination of artificial intelligence assistants becoming personal digital agents is not empty talk. Recently, artificial intelligence passed the recognized difficult accounting industry examination.
Recent research published by American and German scholars shows that OpenAI's latest generation AI language model, ChatGPT 4, has completed and passed four major accounting industry qualification examinations, including certified public accountant (CPA), certified management accountant (CMA), certified internal auditor (CIA) and certified tax agent (EA), with an average score of 85.1. The researchers point out that a few months ago, ChatGPT 3.5 did not pass the test, but the excellent performance of the new version of ChatGPT 4 means that ChatGPT "will have a disruptive impact on the accounting and auditing industry."
David Wood, one of the researchers and a professor of accounting at Brigham Young University in the United States, said that the difference in the performance of ChatGPT's AI technology between the two generations is mainly due to the new generation of new plug-ins that give it the ability to "reason and act."
Professor Wood cautions against exaggerating the impact of ChatGPT 4 just because it passed the accounting profession exam, but it also has a lot of potential if it can help accountants cope with the widespread shortage of staff.
In fact, in addition to the latest accounting industry exams, early versions of ChatGPT have passed various exams. For example, in early February this year, ChatGPT successfully passed Google's programming interview and got an offer for an L3 engineer with an annual salary of $183,000. Although L3 is only the most entry-level level for Google's engineering team, it is still a level that is difficult for ordinary programmers to achieve.
In addition to the academic field, major consumer manufacturers are also applying artificial intelligence to users. In March, GM used OpenAI's ChatGPT to develop a new in-car assistant. This new assistive technology can replace car manuals, integrate with schedulers, and even understand or predict whether garage doors need to be opened or alarms closed. Major domestic Internet manufacturers are also competing in the development of "AI assistants". For example, last month, Zhejiang Tmall Technology Co., Ltd. obtained registration approval for the copyright of "Alibaba Cloud AI Judge Assistant Software", the software is referred to as "AI Judge Assistant", and the current version number is V2.0.
Liu Gaochang, an analyst at Guosheng Securities, believes that the release of ChatGPT plugins provides conditions for the emergence of intelligent assistants. Recently, OpenAI announced the lifting of ChatGPT's inability to connect to the Internet, adding support for plugins for ChatGPT, integrating it with third-party services or extending it to access the latest information, which allows ChatGPT to access other websites and get real-time information, and can access related applications through scheduling APIs.
The research report pointed out that the release of ChatGPT plug-in has expanded the ability of ChatGPT from NLP to can obtain real-time information and perform operations on behalf of users, and users can directly command ChatGPT through human language to help themselves interact with various applications, to a certain extent, ChatGPT can already be regarded as a human intelligent assistant. The specific functions of the plug-in displayed on the OpenAI official website have included recommending restaurants, formulating online shopping, travel, office, searching, language teaching, etc., covering all aspects of clothing, food, housing and transportation.
Daily economic news