As AI (Artificial Intelligence) technology continues to advance, companies like OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, continue to work on improving their product. However, developing the next generation of AI appears to be quite a challenge.
The December 21-22, 2024 issue of the Wall Street Journal ran the article “The Next Great Leap in AI Is Behind Schedule and Crazy Expensive” by Deepa Seetharaman, which discusses these challenges. When continued on another page, the article had the headline “The Next AI Breakthrough Proves Elusive.”
The article reports that the next version of ChatGPT has been delayed due to the challenges involved in developing the next generation technology. The article points out that merely training the AI on larger quantities of data is not the solution. More advanced approaches, such as possibly attempting to find ways to train the AI how to reason, are what’s needed. And, that is not easy. It can also be expensive. According to the article, in order to make the AI smarter, “OpenAI has worked with experts in subjects like theoretical physics to explain how they would approach some of the toughest problems in their field.” OpenAI does this to try to improve how its AI works, possibly helping to eventually develop an AI that might have better reasoning capability.
From my personal experiences, the AI that I’ve used would be so much better if it had the ability to reason and think. For example, if I ask AI which of two possible ways of stating something is grammatically correct, AI might answer that either way is acceptable. AI could not think to tell me that, although both ways of doing it are acceptable, one way looks more professional than the other. I may want my document to look professionally done, but it might not occur to me that I should be asking which way is more professional. It would be nice if AI could think I might want to know which way looks mote professional, and could reason through conditional information about when it is better to do it one way versus the other, instead of just saying both ways are acceptable.
But, AI still does not have thinking and reasoning capability. Yet, it would be nice if next generation AI could think and reason. We will have to wait and see what the next generation of AI can do.
