??? What they’re saying about OpenAI o1
Each week we'll gather headlines and tips to keep you current with how generative AI affects PR and the world at large. If you have ideas on how to improve the newsletter, let us know!
What You Should Know?
OpenAI needs some help from communicators. Its latest model, OpenAI o1, departs from its naming convention, which began with GPT, and isn’t a very meaningful name. Even its nickname, Strawberry, is confusing and doesn’t tell you much about its capabilities. The new model, released Thursday, is all about reasoning and is meant to solve difficult problems.?
While most writers would contend that crafting their next line is a hard problem, that’s not what this model is meant for. GPT-4o is widely considered superior for creating content. So what is the lowdown on OpenAI o1? Here’s how some reporters and AI influencers are talking about it.?
“... it’s important to use o1 only for the questions it’s truly designed to help with: big ones,” wrote Maxwell Zeff of TechCrunch. “To be clear, most people are not using generative AI to answer these kinds of questions today, largely because today’s AI models are not very good at it. However, o1 is a tentative step in that direction.”
“So o1-preview does things that would have been impossible without Strawberry, but it still isn’t flawless: errors and hallucinations still happen, and it is still limited by the ‘intelligence’ of GPT-4o as the underlying model,” Ethan Mollick, Associate Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, wrote on his blog. “Since getting the new model, I haven’t stopped using Claude to critique my posts - Claude is still better at style - but I did stop using it for anything involving complex planning or problem solving. It represents a huge leap in those areas.”
“For AI researchers, cracking reasoning is an important next step toward human-level intelligence,” Kylie Robison wrote in The Verge. “The thinking is that, if a model is capable of more than pattern recognition, it could unlock breakthroughs in areas like medicine and engineering. For now, though, o1’s reasoning abilities are relatively slow, not agent-like, and expensive for developers to use.”
As many in the media focus on o1’s limitations, it’s worth understanding how this new model fits into your workflow. While OpenAI o1 may not be ideal for content creation, its focus on reasoning could potentially assist in problem-solving and strategic planning tasks. You’ll likely have to adapt your prompts for the new model, but for more complex, multi-step processes, o1 could prove to be a stronger brainstorming partner and time saver than existing tools.
Elsewhere …
Tips and Tricks
?Making your survey come to life
What’s happening: Compelling data is a great way to capture media attention, and many brands conduct surveys to gather insights, trends, preferences, or challenges within their industry. But the data is only as good as the questions they ask.?
Why it matters: Well-constructed surveys provide valuable feedback and data that guide business decisions. Poorly phrased questions can lead to confusion, bias, or irrelevant answers, skewing your results. Using AI to assist in question creation helps ensure clarity, neutrality, and a better overall response rate.
How it works: Start by asking your AI tool to generate a first draft of survey questions based on your goals and the information you need. From there, ask it to refine the questions by rephrasing for clarity or simplifying complex wording. If you're targeting a specific audience, ask it to adjust the tone or level of formality accordingly. To ensure the questions remain unbiased, prompt the tool to check for leading or loaded language.
AI tools can help create both multiple-choice and open-ended questions that are designed to elicit the most useful feedback, making your surveys more effective and increasing the likelihood of valuable insights.
Quote of the Week
“A lot of what we did in the early days, and we continue to do now is ... make it easy for people to go to the next generation and continue to move forward. The models that we built 18 months ago are a shadow of the things that we have today. And so, making sure that you have ways for people to upgrade and continue to get that innovation is a big part of some of the things that we had to change.”
— Warren Barkley, Head of Product at Google Cloud for Vertex AI, to TechTarget
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