OpenAI takes an important step towards AI intelligence: ChatGPT's new feature Tasks can set future task reminders

Author: Li Dan

Source: Hard AI

A recently tested feature by OpenAI signifies an important step towards ChatGPT becoming a mature personal assistant, potentially indicating that OpenAI is entering the era of launching autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) with agentic AI, which will lead to the release of a large number of AI agents in the future.

On Tuesday, January 14th, Eastern Time, OpenAI announced the launch of a beta feature called Tasks, which will be available for trial starting Tuesday for subscribers of three different versions of ChatGPT—ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Pro. This feature allows ChatGPT to function more like a traditional digital assistant, such as Apple's Siri or Google's Google Assistant, with the distinction that this assistant possesses more advanced language capabilities.

What can the Tasks feature do? Users can utilize it to instruct ChatGPT to remind them of future tasks and deadlines. For example, if a user's passport is about to expire, they can ask ChatGPT to remind them to renew it. Users can set reminders for any tasks they need to be notified about. Additionally, if a user wants ChatGPT to provide daily weather forecasts, they can specify the date and time for notifications.

These reminder tasks can be one-time or recurring, such as daily notifications, with a maximum of ten activities scheduled at once, allowing up to ten tasks to run simultaneously.

To set a task using the Tasks feature, users need to switch to "4o with scheduled tasks" in the model selection dropdown menu, then write the task prompt. As shown in the screenshots, users can name the task, give instructions, specify what they want ChatGPT to do, when they want it completed, and choose the frequency and timing of reminders.

ChatGPT can also provide suggestions for tasks based on previous conversations with the user.

The Tasks feature is available for different versions of ChatGPT and can send task notifications via desktop, web, and mobile devices, but only the web version of ChatGPT has a task manager. Users can manage tasks directly in the conversation or through the new Tasks section in their profile, allowing them to modify or cancel any scheduled tasks.

Thus, through the Tasks feature, users can have ChatGPT issue reminders six months before their passport expires, or set up regular recurring tasks, such as creating a weekend plan based on the user's location and weather forecast every Friday, or providing a news briefing every morning at 7 AM OpenAI stated that the Tasks in the testing phase will help OpenAI's researchers "understand how people use Tasks and refine the feature before making it available to all ChatGPT users." OpenAI did not specify when or if this feature will be available for free to all users. Currently, it seems that Tasks may still be a premium feature that justifies the subscription fee for ChatGPT.

Some commentators believe that the launch of Tasks marks the evolution of ChatGPT from a passive conversational agent to an assistant capable of actively managing and executing planned tasks. Tasks can enhance user engagement by providing timely relevant information and reminders, while also creating opportunities to improve users' daily work efficiency.

Other commentators suggest that Tasks appear to be OpenAI's first step towards developing independent AI models, or AI agents. Tasks seem to be a very limited version of an agent-based system's capabilities, but it allows users to set reminders with ChatGPT, which is a practical feature that most people expect from digital assistants like Siri and Alexa. In contrast, scheduled information requests are new features that those digital assistants could not previously achieve.

OpenAI defined Agentic AI in a white paper released in 2023 titled "Practices for Governing Agentic AI Systems," stating that the characteristic of such AI systems is the ability to take actions that continuously contribute to achieving goals over a long period without having to explicitly define their behavior in advance.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman hinted at the technology products that OpenAI will release in 2025 at the end of last year, including Agents. This is also the product that the outside world is most looking forward to. Currently, the competition in this field is very fierce, with tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon all racing to implement technology and applications.

Earlier this month, Altman revealed in a blog post reflecting on the two-year anniversary of ChatGPT that 2024 will be an important year for AI agents, stating, "We believe that by 2025, we may see the first batch of AI agents 'joining the workforce' and significantly changing the output of businesses."