1. Potential for more autonomous AI
Models with critical thinking and advanced mathematical abilities could enable more sophisticated AI applications. "I think that could help spur agentic AI, AI that can operate autonomously on behalf of humans in the background," Bourne said. "We might see that become more of a realistic technology."
AI agents can operate independently, making decisions and taking actions with minimal intervention. They’re being embedded into marketing tools like Salesforce’s new Agentforce features.
2. Tradeoff between speed and quality
The o1 model takes longer to process answers, sometimes up to 30 seconds, which it says results in better outputs for queries that require more reasoning. "OpenAI is posing the question, 'Would you wait longer?'" analyst Grace Harmon said. "And I think some people maybe not, maybe they're just not patient enough."
While simple queries for drafting email responses or social media posts might not benefit from the extended reasoning time, for nuanced queries like analyzing data or drafting workflows, that reasoning ability might mean more marketers leverage the tools.
3. Concerns over AI humanization
Describing AI models with human characteristics like “thinking” may fuel concerns about AI’s prominence. Pew Research found that from 2021 to 2023, the share of people more concerned than excited about AI in daily life increased from 37% to 52%.
"I think that the five models or five steps that OpenAI has laid out—chatbots, reasoners, agents, innovators, organizations—it can read as the steps to AGI [artificial general intelligence], it also can read as the road map to developing AI that can completely replace a human worker," Harmon said.
Consumers are not in favor of that level of replacement, with some 64% opposing AI use in customer service, a Gartner survey found.
Listen to the full episode.
This was originally featured in the EMARKETER Daily newsletter. For more marketing insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.