A seemingly-innocuous photo of strawberries in a garden posted by Sam Altman has AI enthusiasts freaking out.
On Wednesday, the OpenAI CEO shared the photo accompanied by a cryptic comment that said, “i love summer in the garden.” But Altman wasn’t just musing about his appreciation for the late summer crop. He was teasing a secretive OpenAI technology dubbed “Project Strawberry.”
According to a Reuters report last month about the project, the ChatGPT-maker is working on a model capable of advanced reasoning that’s one step closer to autonomous AI agents. Internal documents leaked to the outlet describe Strawberry (formerly called Q*) as a model that enables “the company’s AI to not just generate answers to queries but to plan ahead enough to navigate the internet autonomously and reliably to perform what OpenAI terms ‘deep research.'”
More advanced reasoning capabilities means the technology can execute more complex tasks beyond step-by-step user prompts. Reasoning has been one of the trickiest problems to solve in the pursuit of human-level intelligence, so Strawberry would be a breakthrough in achieving AGI (artificial general intelligence).
Temper those expectations for a Strawberry harvest
That said, plans and a timeline for the reported technology are unknown. Plus, Altman’s post could just be an attempt to cultivate buzz during a tumultuous time for OpenAI. As of this week, co-founder John Schulman quit and co-founder Greg Brockman announced his sabbatical, which added to the growing number of executives that have left (or taken leave in Brockman’s case). Compound that with growing concerns about the bursting AI bubble and cooling interest in AI on Wall Street, and OpenAI’s future suddenly looks a little more precarious.
Progress has slowed since OpenAI rocked the industry with ChatGPT. Altman touted GPT-5 as a “significant leap forward,” but there’s still no word on the timing of its release. Researchers suggest that models are running out of data to train on, and OpenAI is reportedly hemorrhaging billions of dollars. None of these are positive signs for the shipping of new products in the near future.
So, Altman’s tweet could suggest that official news about Strawberry is imminent, but it could also just be empty words from the ultimate hype-man who has a track record of “outright lying.” Maybe let’s take these strawberries with a grain of salt.
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