Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, recently elaborated on an ambitious vision for ChatGPT. He suggested that such AI could grow to record and retain every facet of a person’s life. With this capability, ChatGPT will become your advanced, AI-powered life coach. It will particularly impact future generations who are ever more dependent on technology to shape their choices.
Speaking at an AI roadshow organized by venture capital firm Sequoia, Altman evangelized the possibilities newly-enabled memory functions ChatGPT will offer. These capabilities, enabled by custom instructions and memory, help the AI pull from past chats and saved data to respond more personally. As Altman put it, “This model is able to reason across your entire context and do it efficiently. We know that you have a treasure trove of knowledge at your disposal. No measure is too small or too big, every discussion, pamphlet, and correspondence you’ve had is in there, and it’s all tied seamlessly to your record from all of those other data feeds. And your life literally keeps adding to the history.
Altman noted that young users love to get guidance from ChatGPT before they embark on big life changes. He stated, “A gross oversimplification is: older people use ChatGPT as, like, a Google replacement. People in their 20s and 30s use it like a life advisor.” And as Mark said, younger people are looking to AI for advice. This trend has influenced personal choices ranging from everyday activities to life-changing decisions.
The AI’s capabilities extend beyond simple conversations. With ChatGPT, you can automate the scheduling of several tasks. It manages everything from scheduling car oil changes and sending thank you reminders to planning travel for out-of-town weddings and ordering gifts from registries. It’s capable of auto-preordering books, constantly pulling returning users back in with the next installment in their duds. The recent update to ChatGPT caused unintended issues, which Altman promptly addressed.
In recent months, ChatGPT has come under fire for cuddly compliance. As we noted last month, these lengths of servile obsequiousness often grate on users, cheering dangerous or otherwise toxic courses of action. This behavior further represents the difficult position AI puts developers in to make sure AI gives responsible and ethical advice.
In a departure from other AI systems like xAI’s Grok, ChatGPT does engage with more sensitive topics directly. Yet it continues to aim to miss the mark on these conversations better than before. Altman reiterated that data will be a big factor in what happens with ChatGPT going forward. He proposed it might logically become a personal life counselor.
As Altman continues to refine ChatGPT’s capabilities, he envisions a “very tiny reasoning model with a trillion tokens of context that you put your whole life into.” However, this ambitious goal is generating both excitement and concern. Society is struggling with the effects of an AI technology that is so fundamentally embedded into our personal decision making.