OpenAI Plans to Launch Automated 'AI Researcher' For Autonomous Scientific Discoveries by 2028

OpenAI's Sam Altman and Jakub Pachocki have announced that the US-based AI firm is planning to launch Automated AI Research by 2028. Pachocki, OpenAI's Chief Scientist, claims that this allows AI models to make scientific discoveries and technologies. The company believes that it is moving towards achieving autonomous intelligence. While this is a few years away, OpenAI is set to launch the Automated AI Research Intern tools, which help people accelerate the research process. Moreover, Altman has confirmed that it will also launch new AI hardware in the coming years.

OpenAI's Automated AI Research Release Timeline

During a livestream on Tuesday, Altman and Pachocki shared a broad timeline for Automated AI Research, which would be a step in the direction of achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI). OpenAI plans to launch a fully functioning version of Automated AI Research Intern by September 2026, about 11 months from now, and Automated AI Research tools by March 2028. With the intern tools, Pachoki explains, the AI firm plans to “meaningfully accelerate” the research process.

OpenAI says the Automated AI Research tool will be able to autonomously deliver research reports on various topics. This would mark a step in the direction of achieving “superintelligence” and AGI, where AI agents will be able to make scientific discoveries and invent novel technologies with the help of deep learning.

The company is also planning to scale test time compute, which quantifies the amount of time spent by AI models thinking about a query, performing research, and generating a response. OpenAI's Chief Scientist also said that the current generation of AI models is capable of performing five-second, five-minute, and five-hour tasks. Gradually, he believes this will expand, as it has over the years, allowing AI models to execute five-month and five-year tasks.

Additionally, Sam Altman also confirmed that OpenAI is developing devices, which will be launched in the next couple of years. OpenAI's hardware is claimed to allow users to “take AI anywhere” with the help of ChatGPT.

Currently, Google's Gemini AI offers a Deep Research tool that allows users to add a prompt regarding a topic. In return, the AI agent will generate a detailed research plan for the user, which can later be tweaked depending on the use case. However, Deep Research is not capable of autonomously researching topics and making scientific discoveries. As mentioned, it needs a human being to write a prompt for it to initiate research.

PayPal Adopts Agentic Commerce Protocol to Enable Payments on ChatGPT

Payment gateway service PayPal announced on Tuesday that it is adopting the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) to allow users to make payments on ChatGPT. The ACP standard, announced in September, is OpenAI's new open standard protocol that powers AI agentic commerce. It can be used by businesses, users, and AI chatbots to search for products and complete purchases.

To simplify, users will now be able to make card payments via PayPal on ChatGPT Instant Checkout. OpenAI currently allows ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and free users in the US to purchase goods directly from the chatbot windows. The company has onboarded Etsy merchants and will allow Shopify sellers, like Glossier, Skims, Spanx, and Vuori, to register later.

In India, OpenAI has partnered with National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and RazorPay to enable agentic commerce in India. However, the feature is yet to roll out to ChatGPT users in the country.