OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is working on an ambitious new project called “Strawberry” aimed at equipping its artificial intelligence (AI) tools with more advanced reasoning capabilities. According to internal documents consulted by Reuters, the aim is to enable AI not only to generate answers, but also to navigate the Internet autonomously to carry out “in-depth searches”.
The objectives of the Strawberry project
The Strawberry project, which follows on from a previous internal project called Q, aims to significantly improve the reasoning capabilities of OpenAI’s AI models. The idea is to enable them to plan, reflect on the workings of the physical world and reliably solve complex multi-step problems.
According to a source familiar with the matter, this autonomous “deep search” capability has so far eluded existing AI models. OpenAI thus hopes to take the next step in the development of AI capable of more human-like reasoning.
A crucial step forward for AI
Improving reasoning skills is considered essential to enable AI to achieve human-level intelligence, or even higher. Although current language models are good at summarizing texts or composing content, they still struggle with problems of common sense and logic, sometimes generating “hallucinations” of incorrect information.
Indeed, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has stressed that the most important advances in AI will be in reasoning capabilities. Other tech giants such as Google, Meta and Microsoft are also working on techniques to improve the reasoning capabilities of AI models.
A strategic project for OpenAI
The Strawberry project is part of OpenAI’s strategy to meet these challenges and push back the current limits of AI. In fact, the company has told developers that it is about to release a technology with significantly enhanced reasoning capabilities.
Although the technical details of the Strawberry project remain confidential, its development demonstrates OpenAI’s ambition to place its AI models at the forefront of innovation. If successful, the project could open up exciting new possibilities, from scientific discovery to the creation of smarter software applications.
