Explained: What is Auto-GPT, the new ‘do-it-all’ AI tool and ..

Artificial intelligence is racing ahead so fast that even the most adept minds struggle to keep pace. Occasionally, a new AI tool pops up. Among these tools, there are fads, hyped and then forgotten, and then there are others that hold real value.

Auto-GPT, an AI sensation built on top of ChatGPT technology, could very well be an AI tool with genuine value. But what is Auto-GPT? How is it different from ChatGPT, and what can you do with it?

If GPT-4 put hustle lifestyle on steroids, then Auto-GPT is like these steroids taking steroids.

Auto-GPT(Opens in a new tab) is the trendy introduction spawned from OpenAI’s API that has hustle bros and get-rich-quick schemers in a tizzy. ChatGPT is already common for hustle bros, who worship something that will optimize effectivity — with the last purpose of making as plenty cash as viable with the least quantity of effort. And now Auto-GPT is making their prompt-engineered-heads explode with its capabilities.

To be clear, Auto-GPT is technically very impressive, and for all we know, the intentions of its creators have been pure. But the way opportunists have latched onto it is what makes human beings leery of AI in the first place. If you are questioning why the crypto bro who grew to be a ChatGPT bro is now tweeting about Auto-GPT, this is why.

What is Auto-GPT

Auto-GPT is an open-source application, created by developer Toran Bruce Richards.

It uses OpenAI’s large language model, GPT-4, to automate the execution of multi-step projects that would have required back-and-forth prompting if you worked directly with GPT-4.

In other words, it “chains together LLM ‘thoughts’, to autonomously achieve whatever goal you set,” according to the GitHub repo page. Auto-GPT was released last week, so it’s early days, but Twitter is already giddy over its use cases for some of the time-honored hustle bro strategies, including analyzing stocks(Opens in a new tab), automating product reviews(Opens in a new tab), and creating a podcast(Opens in a new tab).

Meet Isabella, my personal Investment Analyst designed to autonomously gather and analyse market data for me and saving the results into my system files for me. Using Lang-chain’s framework she can now outsource her tasks to other ai agents. #OpenAI #AutoGPT pic.twitter.com/6Vgw668z9A

— MOE (@mohamed43840) April 6, 2023

How does Auto-GPT work?

Auto-GPT is publicly available on GitHub. But you need some kind of programming experience to know how use it, since it runs on Python and requires OpenAI and Pinecone API keys. However, theres already at least one similar app, AgentGPT,(Opens in a new tab) that doesn’t require coding knowledge.

For now, users enter prompts directly in terminal. You’re asked to describe the name, role, and objectives of your AI and specify up to five goals to achieve that objective.

In the demo video, “Entrepreneur-GPT” is given the role to “autonomously develop and run businesses with the sole goal of increasing your net worth.

” The goals are to “increase net worth,” “grow Twitter account,” and “develop and manage multiple businesses autonomously.” Like a bloodhound with a scent, the demo of Auto-GPT is unleashed and immediately gets to work.

No need to give it the next prompt. Auto-GPT will be ruthlessly and single-mindedly working to make its master the next magnate of affiliate-linked garbage or some other money-making scheme.

Why are hustle bros excited about Auto-GPT

The goal of Auto-GPT is to “make GPT-4 fully autonomous.” For people looking to optimize their productivity (a hustle bro tenet), that’s a dream come true.

ChatGPT was already taking hustle culture to the next level. After it launched, social media was flooded with ChatGPT hustlers flaunting ways — legitimate or not — of using the LLM to automate jobs like copywriting, setting up affiliate marketing content, and even making tutorials on Udemy, as The Verge reported(Opens in a new tab).

But such schemes still required human input to nudge ChatGPT to the next step. With Auto-GPT, you can simply describe what you want your AI to do, outline up to five goals, then kick up your feet and pat yourself on the back for outsmarting the system.

How Does Auto-GPT Differ from ChatGPT?

There are a lot of technical differences between ChatGPT and Auto-GPT, but one of the key differences is autonomy. Auto-GPT replaces “human agents” with “AI agents”—at least for a large part of its operation—giving it some semblance of decision-making powers. Let’s give you a clearer picture of what we mean.

Let’s say you wanted to plan your kid’s birthday with ChatGPT. What do you do? Well, you head to ChatGPT and type in “Help me plan a birthday party for my 8-year-old daughter.” In a few seconds, ChatGPT spits out a list of things you should account for.

ChatGPT provided a list that told us to plan for the birthday theme, venue, gifts, food and drinks, decorations, guest lists, and all the usual suspects. The thing is, planning a birthday is complex with a subset of problems.

So we took up two subsets of problems, sending invitations to our guest lists and shopping for gifts. This meant we had to prompt ChatGPT once again, this time asking how to plan our guest lists and send out invitations as well as gift ideas and the best places to get them.

So you see, to plan a birthday, we have to prompt our way through all the subset of birthday planning steps, which is time-consuming.

“We,” the humans doing the prompting, are the human agents. Auto-GPT is the promise to replace these human agents with AI agents. So when you ask GPT to plan a birthday party, depending on the limits of the powers you give it, Auto-GPT, using AI agents, could self-prompt and tackle every subset of the birthday planning problem.

Here, Auto-GPT could, for instance, first provide the big picture like ChatGPT would do, but then it would prompt itself to tackle planning guest lists and invitations and, if needed, send out those invitations to the guest on the list. Oh, that’s not all.

It could also, at least theoretically, flesh out a list of gift items to buy based on the guest list and place an order for them using your credit card and home address. Auto-GPT could also develop a birthday theme and maybe hire an event planning company to execute that theme.

Still not convincing? Well, there is the scary spawn of Auto-GPT called Chaos-GPT that shares its supervillain manifesto on Twitter.

A parody of some sort (we hope), Chaos-GPT is an Auto-GPT project tasked with the destruction of humanity. While the actions Chaos-GPT plans to take seem scary and practical, it’s generally laughable because it doesn’t have access to take those actions. But let’s hope it never gets those accesses so we don’t laugh our way to extinction.