What is AutoGPT?
AutoGPT is an open-source AI application leveraging OpenAI’s GPT-4 language model to create fully autonomous and customizable AI agents. According to its founder, Toran Bruce Richards, AutoGPT operates independently, meaning you no longer have to steer the model to meet your needs. Instead, you write your objectives, and the AI does the rest for you. With AutoGPT, the interaction between AI and humans is fundamentally changing, where humans no longer have to play an active role while still maintaining the same or better quality of results as other AI applications like ChatGPT.
How does AutoGPT work?
AutoGPT works based on an autonomous AI mechanism where the AI system creates different AI agents to meet specific tasks. These agents include:
- Task Creation Agent – responsible for creating a list of tasks
- Execution Agent – responsible for executing the tasks created by the Task Creation Agent
- Validation Agent – responsible for validating whether the results are satisfactory
The above agents also communicate with each other. So when the Execution Agent completes all tasks, and the results are unsatisfactory, it can communicate with the Task Creation Agent to create a new list of tasks. This becomes an iterative loop between the three agents until all user-defined goals are completed. The actions of the AI agents are also shown on the user interface by categorizing them into four groups: thoughts, reasoning, plan, and criticism. By sharing this computational flow, AutoGPT gives insights into how it approaches a particular problem and overcomes them without any user intervention.
AutoGPT vs. ChatGPT
While the underlying LLM model is the same, we can draw quite a few distinctions between AutoGPT and ChatGPT. Some of them are:
- Real-time insights – The latest GPT-4 model that ChatGPT uses is trained on the data till September 2021. So you can’t get real-time insights using ChatGPT as you can’t access websites and online platforms to extract information. On the other hand, AutoGPT has access to the internet, and can validate whether a source is legitimate. Further, AutoGPT can access any platform to perform a task.
- Memory Management – AutoGPT is good at short-term and long-term memory management, whereas ChatGPT is limited by the context window, which has a limit of anywhere from 4000 to 8000 tokens.
- Image Generation – AutoGPT is capable of image generating as it uses DALL-E. This feature is currently unavailable in ChatGPT-4 despite being a multi-modal input-wise.
- Text-to-speech – You can enable text-to-speech on AutoGPT by typing python -m autogpt --speak in the command line and add different voices to the speech by connecting AutoGPT to Eleven Labs, a versatile AI speech software. ChatGPT doesn't have this feature.
Limitations of AutoGPT
While the functionality of AutoGPT is amazing, its practicality will likely disappoint you. Some of the key limitations are:
- Cost – AutoGPT uses an expensive GPT-4 model, and the cost per task completion can be high, even for a small task.
- Replication – It is not practical because it can’t replicate outputs in a different scenario when the input is the same.
- Stuck in a loop – The most common issue users are facing with AutoGPT is it gets stuck in a loop. It likely means you have to restart the process.
- Data security – When an AI model operates autonomously with access to your system and the internet, your data may be leaked.
- Installation – Unlike other AI tools, AutoGPT has no simple sign-up procedure to access its platform and features. You must download various softwares to meet requirements before you start using AutoGPT.
How to Install AutoGPT
You have three main software requirements to install AutoGPT: Git, Python, and Visual Code Studio. Follow these steps to install AutoGPT:
- Download Git, Python, and Visual Code Studio from the quick links on the AutoGPT page.
- Create an OpenAI account and generate a secret key.
- Clone the AutoGPT GitHub repository using the command prompt.
