SAN FRANCISCO — Leading AI company OpenAI tried to navigate through a storm of controversy on a cloudless San Francisco Tuesday, touting a new wave of products and tools it said would empower users with autonomous assistants.Welcoming around 2,500 software engineers and AI aficionados on an oceanside pier for the company’s biggest-ever celebration of technical developers, OpenAI released several new products while holding back its most advanced system for safety reasons.CEO Sam Altman kicked off the day by unveiling Dots — autonomous AI systems, or AI agents, that function continuously to carry out tasks on behalf of users.
“It’s like an AI helper that always has your back,” Altman said, proclaiming that Dots allowed him to delegate tasks and regain some of his attention for other meaningful tasks.“I no longer feel quite addicted to my phone in the same way.
It’s the way I’ve always wanted to work with AI,” he said.OpenAI said Dots can accomplish “nearly anything” using their own cloud computer, web browser and connections to the over 4,000 applications that already function with ChatGPT, such as Slack or Google Drive.People arrive at the OpenAI developers conference at Fort Mason in San Francisco.Heather Diehl / Getty ImagesHit by a Silicon Valley spell of Murphy’s Law, the opening keynote was beset by a series of technical difficulties.
Romain Huet, head of developer experience at OpenAI, ran into trouble trying to showcase users’ ability to direct Dots by voice commands.“Voice chat couldn’t start,” the mainstage display beamed out to the audience.
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