OpenAI unveils an even more powerful AI, but is it 'alive'?



In the 2013 film "Her," Joaquin Phoenix plays a shy computer nerd who falls in love with an AI he speaks to through a pair of white wireless earbuds. A little over a decade after the film’s release, it’s no longer science fiction. AirPods are old news, and with the imminent full rollout of OpenAI’s GPT-4o, such AI will be a reality (the “o” is for “omni"). In fact, OpenAI head honcho Sam Altman simply tweeted after the announcement: “her.”

GPT-4o can carry on a full conversion with you. In the coming weeks, it will be able to see and interpret the environment around it. Unlike previous iterations of GPT that were flat and emotionless, GPT-4o has personality and even opinions. It pauses and stutters like a person, and it’s even a little flirty. Here’s a video of GPT-4o critiquing a man’s outfit for a job interview:

Interview Prep with GPT-4owww.youtube.com

In fact, no human involvement is required. Two instances of GPT-4o can carry on an entire conversation without human involvement.

Soon, humans may not be required for many jobs. Here’s a video of GPT-4o handling a simulated customer service call. Currently, nearly 3 million Americans work in customer service, and chances are they’ll need a new job within a couple of years.

Two GPT-4os interacting and singingwww.youtube.com

GPT-4o is an impressive technology that was mere science fiction at the start of the decade, but its also comes with some harrowing implications. First, let’s clear up some confusion about the components of GPT-4o and what’s currently available.

Clearing up confusion about what GPT-4o is

OpenAI announced several things at once, but they’re not all rolling out at the same time.

GPT-4o will eventually be available to all ChatGPT users, but currently, the text-based version is only available for ChatGPT Plus subscribers who pay $20 per month. It can be used on the web or in the iPhone app. Compared to GPT-4, GPT-4o is much faster and just a little smarter. Web searches are much faster and more reliable, and GPT is better about listing its sources than it was with GPT-4.

However, the new text and voice models are not yet available to anyone except developers interacting with the GPT API. If you subscribe to ChatGPT Plus, you can use Voice Mode with the 4o engine, but it will still be using the old voice model without image recognition and the new touches.

Additionally, OpenAI is rolling out a new desktop app for the Mac, which will let you bring up ChatGPT with a keyboard shortcut and feed it screenshots for analysis. It will eventually be free to all, but right now it’s only available to select ChatGPT Plus subscribers.

ChatGPT macOS app... reminds me of Windows Copilotwww.youtube.com

Finally, you may watch these demo videos and wonder why the voice assistant on your phone is still so, so dumb. There are strong rumors indicating that Apple is working on a deal to license the GPT tech from OpenAI for its next-generation Siri, likely as a stopgap while Apple develops its own AI tech.

Is GPT-4o AGI?

The hot topic in the AI world is AGI, short for artificial general intelligence. In short, it’s an AI indistinguishable from interacting with a human being.

I asked GPT-4o for the defining characteristics of an AGI, and it presented the following:

  1. Generalization: The ability to apply learned knowledge to new and varied situations.
  2. Adaptability: The capacity to learn from experience and improve over time.
  3. Understanding and reasoning: The capability to comprehend complex concepts and reason logically.
  4. Self-awareness: Some definitions of AGI include an element of self-awareness, where the AI understands its own existence and goals.

Is GPT-4o an AGI? AI developer Benjamin De Kraker called it “essentially AGI,” while NVIDIA’s Jim Fan, who was also an early OpenAI intern, was much more reserved.

I decided to go directly to the source and asked GPT-4o if it’s an AGI. It predictably rejected the notion. “I don't possess general intelligence, self-awareness, or the ability to learn and adapt autonomously beyond my training data. My responses are based on patterns and information from the data I was trained on, rather than any understanding or reasoning ability akin to human intelligence,” GPT-4o said.

But doesn’t that also describe many, if not most, people? How many of us go through life parroting things we heard without applying additional understanding or reasoning? I suspect De Kraker is right: To the average person, the full version of GPT-4o will be AGI. If OpenAI’s demo videos are an accurate example of its actual capabilities, and they likely are, then GPT-4o successfully emulates the first four tenets of AGI: generalization, adaptability, understanding, and reasoning. It can view and understand its surroundings, can give opinions, and it constantly learns new information from crawling the web or user input.

At least, it will be convincing enough for what we in the business world call “decision makers.” It’ll be convincing enough to replace human beings in many customer-facing roles. And for many lonely people, they will undoubtedly form emotional bonds with the flirty AI, which Sam Altman is fully aware of.

Mysterious happenings at OpenAI

We would be remiss not to discuss some mysterious high-level departures from OpenAI following the GPT-4o announcement. Ilya Sutskever, chief scientist and co-founder, quit immediately after, soon followed by Jan Leike, who helped run OpenAI’s “superalignment” group that seeks to ensure that the AI is aligned with human interests. This follows many other resignations from OpenAI in the past few weeks.

Sutskever led an attempted coup against Altman last year, successfully deposing him as CEO for about a week before he was reinstated as CEO. Sutskever can best be described as a “safetyist” who is deeply concerned about the implications of an AGI, so his sudden resignation following the GPT-4o announcement has sparked a flurry of online speculation about whether OpenAI has achieved AGI or if he realized that it’s impossible, because it would be strange to leave the company if it were on the verge of AGI.

From his statement, it seems that Sutskever doesn’t believe OpenAI has achieved AGI and that he’s moving on to greener pastures — ”a project that is very personally meaningful to me.” Given OpenAI’s rapid trajectory with him as chief scientist, he can certainly write his own ticket now.

Flame-throwing robots and cars that can VOTE are closer than you think



As artificial intelligence continues to make incredible advancements, the threat of UBI feels closer than ever.

“There’s going to come a time, no job, you’re going to have to have Universal Basic Income,” Glenn warns, before recalling a conversation he once had with Ray Kurzweil.

“I said, ‘Ray, all of this technology makes us weaker,’ and he said, ‘No, it’ll make us stronger because you won’t have to worry about keeping all this other stuff in your brain,’” Glenn remembers. “And I said, ‘Really? When GPS goes down, tell my kids to go find their way to a store with a map.’”

Despite Glenn’s awareness of the situation at hand, that hasn’t stopped him from investing in some seriously impressive security, like a flame-throwing robot dog.

The robot dog can clear snow, sense body heat, and comes with a flamethrower, laser, light, and cameras.

Glenn is also getting a drone from Sunflower Labs that geofences your property, and if it senses anything moving, “It automatically deploys and holds them in place.”

“We’re living in that weird world now that we’ve watched in movies forever,” Glenn says.

“What are the odds though that something can go wrong with it, and it uses its flame-throwing ability to burn your house down,” Pat Gray says, unconvinced. “It will happen. It’s inevitable. Something’s going to go wrong with some of them.”

While Glenn knows he’s right, he also knows that there’s no stopping what’s coming.

“I’ve been reading about this since the ‘90s when it comes to technology. Your car eventually is going to be able to make money on its own,” Glenn says. “It’ll make money, but it’ll also have so much technology in it that it could invest that money in the stock market.”

“And if it has the ability to affect the economy, shouldn’t it have a right to vote? I mean the things that are coming, nobody’s prepared for this, and it’s all going to be here by 2030,” he adds.


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Glenn Beck: It may be five years before 'true slavery' as AI gets alarmingly smarter



The future is here — and not in a good way.

Stu witnessed it on a recent trip to Los Angeles, recalling autonomous robots making deliveries all over the city. “There are robots, robot vehicles that look like you could have put them in a 'Star Wars,'” he explains. “They’re just driving around the city by themselves crossing traffic.”

While that’s bad enough, there has also been a major announcement regarding ChatGPT, which is that there’s a new version.

“The new version of this is like full-out female voice, personality, you have a conversation with,” Stu tells Glenn and Pat, adding, “This is not a future, ‘Hey. in 20 years we’ll have this.’ It’s out right now.”

The new version also allows the app to turn into a teacher, explaining math problems without giving the answer to those struggling.

“Our kids are going to have conversations with these things and think it’s totally normal to do so,” Stu says, terrified.

But it gets worse. As soon as ChatGTP came out with its new version, Google came out with its own update to its AI, Gemini.

“Now, when you Google something, instead of prioritizing search results which is their entire multi-billion dollar business, they’re one of the biggest companies on Earth — they now prioritize AI answers through its Gemini,” Stu explains.

“What is prioritized now is just their large language model going through all the results and giving you their summary of what they want you to read,” he adds.

Glenn is extremely concerned but has a theory.

“I am convinced that a massive solar flare may actually in the end be God freeing us from the electronic overseer, because that’s what’s going to stop it,” Glenn says, noting that the outlook isn't pretty otherwise.

“We’re five years away from true slavery, and it won’t look like slavery to most people.”


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To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.