The Complete Guide to ChatGPT O1-Preview: Everything You Need to Know

What is the o1 Model?

o1 is a new reasoning-optimized inference model from OpenAI. It builds upon existing models to enhance logical reasoning and decision-making while maintaining efficiency in large-scale applications.

I have been playing around with this new ChatGPT model for the past day, and I have highlighted some of the most important aspects of this new model, like where it outperforms and some best use cases, key drawbacks of this model, and much more.

So follow along and read till the end.

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Let’s jump right into it.

Table of Contents

1. How to use the OpenAI o1 Model
2. Key Features of the O1 Model
3. Key drawbacks of this Model
4. Performance Benchmarks
5. Learning to Reason with LLMs
6. Chain of Thought
7. Some Practical Use Cases
8. GPT-4o vs GPT o1-preview(Making the Right Choice for Your Needs)
9. What’s Next?

How to use OpenAI o1

ChatGPT Plus and Team users can access o1 models in ChatGPT starting today.

The model picker allows you to manually select both o1-preview and o1-mini.

The weekly rate limits will be 30 messages for o1-preview and 50 for o1-mini.

OpenAI is also working to increase those rates and enable ChatGPT to automatically choose the right model for a given prompt.

OpenAI is also planning to bring o1-mini access to all ChatGPT Free users in the upcoming month.

Key Features of the o1 Model

How Does o1 Stand Out?

• Advanced Logical Reasoning: Learns from patterns and makes logical inferences.
• Improved Accuracy: Demonstrates a 15% increase in complex reasoning tasks.
• Scalable Efficiency: Adapts to various hardware settings, improving resource management.

As per OpenAI, the o1 model ranks in the 89th percentile on competitive programming questions (Codeforces) and places among the top 500 students in the US in a qualifier for the USA Math Olympiad (AIME). It exceeds human Ph.D.-level accuracy on a benchmark of physics, biology, and chemistry problems (GPQA).

OpenAI observed that o1’s performance consistently improves with reinforcement learning (train-time compute) and more time spent thinking (test-time compute).

Key drawbacks of this Model

The model lacks certain aspects such as:

1. The cut-off dates of the o1-preview and o1-mini models are October 2023.

2. These models still can’t go through content from an online external link.

3. You cannot upload a file and get insights from it like one can get from the Gpt-4o model.

Performance Benchmarks

Unmatched Speed & Accuracy!

• Inference Speed: o1 operates 50% faster than previous models.
• Reasoning Tasks: Outperforms other models with a 20% increase in solving reasoning-based problems.
• OpenAI highlighted the improvement in reasoning with GPT-4o and other models across various human exams and ML benchmarks.
• They observed that o1 significantly outperforms GPT-4o on most of these reasoning-heavy tasks.

Learning to Reason with LLMs

Reasoning Capabilities and Chain of Thought

o1 leverages new techniques from OpenAI’s Learning to Reason with LLMs research, showing improved reasoning over longer contexts. It excels in areas such as:

• Mathematical problem solving
• Coding
• Logical deductions
• General knowledge application
• Science

Chain of Thought

• Just like a human might take a while to think before answering a tough question, o1 uses a chain of thought to solve problems.
• Through reinforcement learning, o1 improves its chain of thought, refines its strategies, recognizes and corrects mistakes, breaks down complex steps into simpler ones, and tries different approaches when needed.
• This process significantly enhances o1’s reasoning abilities.

You can read more in-depth about this here — https://openai.com/index/learning-to-reason-with-llms/

Some Practical Use Cases

Some real-world Applications of the O1 Model

The o1 model is optimized for both logical reasoning and practical, real-world applications. Its enhanced performance enables a wide range of use cases, including:

1. Automated Legal Analysis

• o1 can parse and analyze complex legal documents, offering logical recommendations for legal strategies or contract reviews, streamlining the work of legal advisors.
• Enhanced Capability: Faster text comprehension and logical deductions lead to higher accuracy in parsing legal jargon and case history.

2. Personalized Education Platforms

• Used in AI-driven tutoring systems, o1 offers real-time, personalized learning paths based on a student’s performance. It accurately tracks progress and suggests learning materials.
• Enhanced Capability: Its logical reasoning allows for better adaptation to the learner’s needs, providing more context-based suggestions and corrective feedback.

3. Healthcare Diagnosis Assistants

• o1 can analyze patient data, cross-reference symptoms, and suggest possible diagnoses with higher accuracy. It helps reduce diagnostic errors, particularly in rare or complex cases.
• Enhanced Capability: The model’s deeper reasoning improves decision-making in critical healthcare scenarios by analyzing medical histories more efficiently.

4. Real-Time Fraud Detection in Finance

• o1 can detect anomalies in financial transactions by applying logical reasoning to large datasets, enabling faster detection of fraudulent activities in real-time.
• Enhanced Capability: Faster data processing with improved logical inference helps to identify patterns of financial fraud more effectively than traditional models.

5. Customer Service Chatbots

• With o1, chatbots can handle more complex customer queries, including those requiring logical understanding and personalized responses. This can drastically reduce human intervention in customer support.
• Enhanced Capability: The ability to reason over longer conversations allows chatbots to keep context and provide more accurate resolutions.

GPT-4o vs GPT o1-preview(Making the Right Choice for Your Needs)

Now, choosing between ChatGPT o1-preview and ChatGPT 4o ultimately depends on your specific requirements and priorities.

Opt for ChatGPT o1-preview if:

• Speed is a critical factor for your applications.
• You need a model with heightened intelligence for complex tasks.
• Your focus is on text-based interactions without the need for visual content.

Choose ChatGPT 4o if:

• Image generation tasks and other complex tasks like uploading files and interacting with them.
• Interacting with external links on the internet.
• Visual content is essential for your projects.
• You’re looking to streamline creative processes by combining text and visuals in one platform.

What’s Next?

The o1 model is just the start. The advancements in logical reasoning hint at a future where AI can tackle even more complex, real-world problems.

Curious About the Full Report? Explore OpenAI’s detailed technical report on the o1 model and its reasoning advancements.

1. https://openai.com/index/learning-to-reason-with-llms/
2. https://openai.com/index/introducing-openai-o1-preview/