OpenAI launched ChatGPT Agent on Thursday, its latest effort in the industry-wide pursuit to turn AI into a profitable enterprise—not just one that eats investors’ billions. In its announcement blog, OpenAI says its Agent “can now do work for you using its own computer,” but CEO Sam Altman warns that the rollout presents unpredictable risks.
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OpenAI research lead Lisa Fulford told Wired that she used Agent to order “a lot of cupcakes,” which took the tool about an hour, because she was very specific about the cupcakes.
Man, remember all the custom cupcake bakers who were clamoring for an AI to take their craft?
Me neither. Billionaires are a scourge upon society.
Is just ordering them, not making them yet
So much for the internet. We somehow managed to turn one of humanity’s greatest achievements into a hateful echo chamber we use for warfare first and then into a blackbox where inefficient AI agents communicate with each other in the most inefficient way so the planet can cook us alive even faster. God forbid just calling up a bakery to order some cupcakes.
Companies will dump billions into AI to fuck everyone over but the transition to clean energy is always too expensive.
Or just sending an email.
I think in some ways Generative AI is very emblematic of the current state of software development. Projects are approached from the outset with the driving question being, “how can we make money materialize out of thin air?” Not, “What kind of problems are we trying to solve?” Or, “Why would someone pay for this?”
The last several projects I’ve worked on have been solutions in search of a problem. Hyped up products that made executives see dollar signs but didn’t actually produce any because they failed to provide any tangible value.
That’s quite a bold statement to make since he now has US military contracts. What is he making cupcakes for the Pentagon?
For anyone wondering what the fuck that title meant:
OpenAI research lead Lisa Fulford told Wired that she used Agent to order “a lot of cupcakes,” which took the tool about an hour, because she was very specific about the cupcakes.
“It was easier than me doing it myself,” Fulford said, “because I didn’t want to do it.”
Okay but that’s not what easier means.
Easier would be to call the bakery or spending 10 minutes browsing their website, asking to cast, and checking out.
I don’t want to spend an hour on tasks that would normally take 10 minutes. My executive dysfunctions already make me good at doing that.
This might be a revolutionary idea, but what if they helped me do that take an hour in 10 minutes?
I’m just putting that idea out there totally for free in case any AI companies want to jump on that opportunity.
It’s a starting point
I use agents a lot and have written several MCP servers now, the tasks I automate aren’t things like order cupcakes, it’s mainly the glue between complex things.
I still can’t get Claude to nicely open a JIRA ticket for me, but I can get it to read through a sequence of connected documents and filter that into.
I don’t think agents are ready for the main event and these are some poor examples of their power.
I’m not saying they won’t improve, but using the right tool for the right job is critical. An hour to order cupcakes is silly even for an llm.
I’m still wondering. Like did it call up a bakery and place an order? Or go online? I know it didn’t actually make the cupcakes itself.
But I’m not sure that spending an hour trying to wrangle ChatGPT into getting your cupcakes is any faster or easier than placing the order yourself.
The article also noticeably omits what happened after. Were the cupcakes made, and did they match what she wanted?
The AI willed those cupcakes into existence, why don’t you trust them?
It’s like the metaverse and NFT, you’re not supposed to think about how it works. Instead you just need to believe reality will magically reorganize to make it work.
