Race towards 'autonomous' AI agents grips Silicon Valley

FILE PHOTO: AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters and robot hand miniature in this illustration taken, June 23, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

Around a decade after virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa burst onto the scene, a new wave of AI helpers with greater autonomy is raising the stakes, powered by the latest version of the technology behind ChatGPT and its rivals.

Experimental systems that run on GPT-4 or similar models are attracting billions of dollars of investment as Silicon Valley competes to capitalize on the advances in AI. The new assistants - often called "agents" or "copilots" - promise to perform more complex personal and work tasks when commanded to by a human, without needing close supervision.