A select group of US officials are going to get to “meet” the “Ph.D-level” agents from OpenAI behind closed doors.
The meeting, which will reportedly take place on January 30th, is being hosted by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
However, details of what the officials will get to see are scant. When they do hit the press, they are sure to be accompanied by concerns about the power tech companies are unleashing. This is not least because legislation is dramatically lagging behind and because the Trump administration (and its gang of supporting tech bros) are advocates of minimal intervention when it comes to innovating to make big bucks.
What Is a Super Agent?
This is an AI agent that is capable of doing complex human tasks. They have the advantage of being able to deep dive through thousands of pieces of data autonomously and make sense of it – and in a fraction of the time of a human. This is why they have been described as comparable in intelligence to a Ph.D level student. They can tackle a goal, as opposed to a single task, says Axios, which broke the story.
Altman has suggested that this year will be meteoric for his company, as it pushes to make ChatGPT even more appealing.
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This is also the year in which the company is striving to create AI agents that could “join the workforce and materially change the output of companies,” he shared in a blog post.
What the officials will actually be getting to see could be something entirely different, aimed specifically at government services, as opposed to bookings.
AI Arms Race
Creating these super agents or Agentic AI is becoming the Holy Grail for those competing in the AI sphere. Meta has been furiously pushing its Llama-powered Meta AI on its social media platforms and messaging apps. It has also made the open source AI model available to the US government to “support the prosperity and security of the United States.”
Meanwhile, Amazon is facing accusations that it is falling behind as it admits that AI Alexa is nowhere near ready for public consumption. This is despite the billions the company has pumped into AI wunderkind Anthropic.
Microsoft is facing similar negativity but specifically from the CEO of Salesforce. Marc Benioff has called Microsoft’s AI assistant, Copilot, a “huge disaster” and “…the new Microsoft Clippy.”
Whatever OpenAI is going to show off has got to be something above and beyond what is available now or even what we can imagine to merit such covertness.
Concerns Abound
While we don’t know the details, the fact that the closed-door meeting is being held with government officials might get federal employees concerned.
They are already facing four years under a president who strongly believes that there is government wastage to attack – and has appointed his DOGE team to do so. Could AI play a role in cutting costs too?
The World Economic Forum warned earlier this month that 41% of companies will make job cuts in the next five years because of AI. With the most powerful men in tech now behind the Trump Administration, could the US Government and its many departments be one of the first places where agentic AI is given a place at the table?
