GPT-4o can use the camera and recognize the environment

"AI shares instead of basic income: OpenAI boss Altman is thinking about a right to computing power. That sounds almost a bit Marxist, but he would rather abolish the state.

 

On Monday, Open AI presented a new version of its AI model, and if you believe those who believe the impressive advertising presentation, the reference that company boss Sam Altman immediately provided is quite apt: "Her" he wrote on Twitter, just this one word - and by that he meant the 2013 film in which Spike Jonze imagines a future in which computers seem so human that you could fall in love with them, at least if they sound like Scarlett Johansson.

 

GPT-4o now seems to be the realization of this science fiction, the o stands for "omni". GPT-4o can not only speak like a human, say "hmm" and clear her throat, but can also sing lullabies in a gentle voice, can use the camera and recognize the environment and even master a bit of irony and sarcasm, at least at the level of the sensitive communication rules of Silicon Valley.

 

While the system seduces users with its charm, the friendly visionary of the future Sam Altman is already thinking out loud about what a world could look like in which the next generation of his machines is running. The social changes will be enormous, he predicted in the podcast "All-in" and proposed a new foundation for a "social contract": Instead of the idea of ​​a universal basic income popular in the libertarian computer industry, one should think about a "universal basic compute", in other words about unconditional access to the computing power of AIs.

 

Instead of old-fashioned dollars, every person could get "a slice of the computing power of GPT-7", i.e. a "part of the productivity". That sounds almost a bit Marxist, like the socialization of the means of production, but that is certainly not what Altman means. After all, he is "not a big fan of how the government has handled most of the measures to help poor people," he said. It would be better to "just give people money," then "they would make good decisions and the market would do its job."

 

Or, even better: GPT shares. The future residents could then "use them, sell them" or "donate them to someone for cancer research." Or maybe to develop a social order that is not quite so simple-minded." [1]

 

1. Ein Scheibchen ChatGPT für jeden. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (online) Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung GmbH. May 18, 2024. Von Harald Staun