AI is accelerating faster than ever — so much so that we might need to rename “internet time” to “AI time.”

a blog post written by Rajat Taneva, President Technology at Visa

Last Friday the 13th, OpenAI released a preview of their latest model, named o1, following its predecessors: 4.o and 4.0.

(Side note: They are really keeping us on our toes with these product names. Maybe their Turing test should involve a branding question for their model. Would love to hear what marketers are thinking about this quirky and somewhat confusing naming convention.)

Despite the name, o1 represents a major leap forward. This model benefits from advanced reinforcement learning techniques, a new reward model and an embedded chain of thought (CoT) in the inference process to enhance its reasoning and interaction quality.

While exact details on its development, data sets, model tuning and safeguards haven’t been revealed yet, early tests show impressive results. The embedded CoT gives the model a more human-like touch, allowing it to grasp user intent more deeply and handle complex tasks with simple user input. Several tests over the weekend from different domains all place it amongst the higher performing models in the space.

In my own personal experience, o1 feels like conversing with an exceptionally smart expert, almost like talking to a near-human intelligence.

This tells me it’s paving the way toward a concept I refer to as “AI employees.” Basically, these newer reasoning models are shifting from helping us do our jobs, to doing the work for us much more independently, using only human supervision and direction.

The team behind o1 is clearly doing extraordinary work in LLM training. I’m hopeful they’ll share more about their methods and safety measures soon, so practitioners like myself can confidently explore these new capabilities.

We’ve learned in the past two years alone that the pace of innovation in AI is accelerating faster than ever — so much so that we might need to rename “internet time” to “AI time.”

It is by far the most exhilarating period in my career, and I feel lucky to be in the midst of it all.