Colin’s Note: This week, we’re focusing on innovations in artificial intelligence…
After we spent last week digging into what’s next for AI, we noted that the name of the game right now is innovation. We’re at the point where it’s important to shift focus to finding companies that are taking this technology to the next level, so to speak.
And today, we’re talking about Devon – the new all-in-one AI agent from Silicon Valley startup Cognition AI.
Devon is the first of a new kind of AI agent that will usher in a new era of AI. These agents aren’t like the “prompt and response” AIs we’ve come to know and love over the past year with the rise of generative chatbots like ChatGPT…
They go the extra mile to provide solutions, rather than just responses.
It’s all in today’s video. Just click below to watch.
Bleeding Edge subscribers, hopefully, you guys are doing well.
This week is going to be all about innovation here at The Bleeding Edge. And today, I am going to be talking about something that I’ve read quite a bit of research on over the past several months. It now seems to be on the cusp of a breakthrough that investors will focus on soon.
All of the demonstrations I’ve seen up until now weren’t particularly impressive or groundbreaking. But that all changed over the past week. That’s after Silicon Valley’s latest tech startup backed by Peter Thiel’s venture fund emerged from stealth mode.
So these days, startups with an idea believed to be so cutting edge or interesting will exist in secrecy or stealth until the time is right to demonstrate their product to the public. And last week a company called Cognition AI emerged to launch a software it’s calling Devon.
Devon is a new form of AI software that falls under what’s normally referred to as artificial intelligence (AI) agents. A typical AI requires prompting and instruction.
For example, if I have ChatGPT up and I ask it to write a blog post on dinosaurs, it will. I can simply ask it to write me a post on dinosaurs and it will.
However, if I wanted to publish that post to a website… and create a logo for that website… then create social media posts and a menu structure… and all these different things for an actual website… well, that would require a lot more prompting and expertise on my end. So while ChatGPT certainly could help me with all of this, it wouldn’t be able to do all those tasks on its own.
AI agents operate completely differently. By entering a prompt into Devon’s chatbot-like interface, users initiate the process in natural language. So from there, Devon functions almost like a human AI software engineer.
It will create a comprehensive step-by-step strategy to address the task mimicking human methods – like utilizing different tools like blog posts and forums – and it’s going to create and complete a larger task. This includes writing code, resolving problems, and conducting tests to make sure everything works.
What sets it apart is its ability to provide a real-time process update as well, enabling someone like me to monitor the entire process as it unfolds.
Devon’s founder demonstrated how Devon is adept at a variety of tasks in its present form, related mostly to computer programming. For example, it can deploy and enhance apps and websites from start to finish.
That means I can simply ask Devin to create a website or an app on a given subject like dinosaurs, for example, and the software will write the code, make a logo, resolve bugs, generate the content, and publish it to a website all on its own. This is like having a full-fledged employee right next to you, not just an AI software tool like ChatGPT.
In fact, one of the demonstrations was super impressive. It outlined Devon’s capabilities where it was able to pull real job listings from the freelance job board, Upwork. The AI software tool was able to write and debug a computer vision model where computers can identify objects. And it was just using the instructions from the job listing. It was super impressive.
Now, I understand what the common pushback is when we’re seeing this type of demonstration – Devon and AI agent software. People are worried that this is going to take jobs away. And on a surface level, look, that’s probably true with almost all technology.
The rise of Netflix took away jobs. You might remember that Blockbuster was on multiple corners in cities. And the rise of streaming services like Netflix took away all those jobs. The iPhone and GPS made the physical map business pretty much non-existent.
What’s interesting about Devon though is it relies on humans and human content to learn and solve different tasks.
In one example, Devon once learned from a blog post by a human how to execute code that generates images within hidden images. The reality is that human-generated knowledge through written and spoken word will only become more valuable in the era of AI and AI agents.
If people stop sharing solutions to problems, AI development will quickly plateau. Just like the incentive to make movies and TV shows didn’t die with Blockbuster… neither will the incentive to create content and share ideas on the web.
Also, most of these AI startup projects are being viewed strictly from the point of view of a computer scientist. Most of these AI agents are designed to write computer code and not much else at this point.
Eventually, this technology will enable teachers to engage students better… help counselors and therapists solve mental health challenges… create nutrition and fitness programs that are more engaging and easier to stick with. The possibilities are huge here.
From an investment standpoint, I wonder if platforms like Upwork and Fiverr, and job boards like Indeed, will turn into the Blockbuster Video of old.
Think about it. Blockbuster Video used to be our gateway to entertainment just like job boards are a gateway to employment. I feel AI agents will change the gateway to getting things done, just like Netflix changed how we view TVs and movies.
Either way, AI agents as demonstrated by Cognitive AI will usher in a completely new era of AI where it’s not just simply prompt and response. AI agents will be more about prompt and solution.
I’ll be sure to continue to follow this industry and follow all the exciting developments here and bring them to you when the news develops. Folks, that was The Bleeding Edge for today. Hopefully, you all have a great week. I’ll be back again soon, and good luck with your investments.
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