AI: OpenAI's other roadmap for the AI 'Intelligence Layer'. RTZ #511

...their 'Swarm APIs' lay the course to a 'hybrid' multi-agent AI layer that binds AI applications and services across operating systems

OpenAI has long described its aspirations to build towards AGI, aka artificial general intelligence and ‘superintelligence’. I’ve discussed OpenAI’s roadmap to AGI via AI levels like ‘Reasoning’, ‘Agents’ and more.

And the plethora of AI products and services coming, including of course GPT-5 ‘Orion’ later this winter. Not to mention its deeper ‘thinking’ and ‘reasoning’ ‘Strawberry’ Open-01 going soon from ‘Preview’ to a full roll-out.

But the recent flow of these products and services, mostly delivered to Developers worldwide and Partners via ‘APIs’ or application programming interfaces, underline another roadmap that OpenAI is also pursuing, with its partner Microsoft.

It’s an ‘Intelligence’ layer that runs on top of the AI Tech stack operating systems. In particular, it’s a ‘multi-agent orchestration’ layer, that manages the machine ‘Intelligence’ delivered at the right time and place.

They provide the ability to blend both probabilistic ‘LLM AI technologies’ with deterministic software systems used for over half a century now. These are the ‘hybrid AI’ systems I’ve discussed before, that will eventually make AI far more reliable, safe, and resilient over time. Meta AI chief Yann LeCun in particular focuses on this hybrid approach in particular, as I discussed a few days ago.

An indication of this additional AI roadmap is this week’s update on OpenAI’s ‘Swarm API’. A bit in the tech weeds, but worth understanding. Venturebeat does a good job summarizing this in “OpenAI’s Swarm AI agent framework: Routines and handoffs”:

“The newly launched Swarm framework from developers at OpenAI is an experimental tool designed to orchestrate networks of AI agents, and it’s been making waves in the tech community. Unlike other multi-agent frameworks, Swarm aims to provide a blend of simplicity, flexibility and control that sets it apart. Although still in its early stages, Swarm offers a fresh take on agent collaboration, with core concepts like “routines” and “handoffs” to guide agents through collaborative tasks.”

“While Swarm is not an official OpenAI product nor is intended as a production-ready tool, it provides valuable insights into the potential of multi-agent systems in enterprise automation. Its key focus is on simplifying agent interactions, which is achieved through the Chat Completions API. This stateless design means agents do not retain memory between interactions, contributing to Swarm’s simplicity but limiting its use for complex decision-making tasks that require contextual memory.”

The enterprise focus is apt given the robust interest in AI Agentic applications there by all the leading software players like Microsoft, Salesforce et al.

I’ve discussed the important of memory solutions in AI before, with Anthropic’s recent memory cache systems being a recent example. Venturebeat continues:

“Developers need to implement their own memory solutions, which offer both challenges and opportunities for customization. This balance of simplicity and control is a major point of attraction for developers interested in learning about or building multi-agent orchestration systems.”

“Swarm is distinct in its lightweight design, focusing on ease of understanding and implementation. This approach gives developers more granular control over execution steps and tool calls, making it easier to experiment with agent interactions and orchestrations. Compared to other frameworks like LangChain or CrewAI, Swarm’s stateless model is easier to grasp, which makes it accessible for those who are new to multi-agent systems.”

These software tools and layers reside in Box 5 in the AI Tech Stack chart above.

Also notable of course is the open-source nature of Swarm, again highlighting how both open and closed AI software systems are critical to building the next layers of AI ‘Intelligence’ systems:

“The decision to open-source Swarm has created an opportunity for community-driven development, potentially leading to novel uses and improvements. As developers experiment with Swarm, they contribute to the growing understanding of how multi-agent orchestration can be leveraged to solve real-world problems, particularly in enterprise environments where automation can drive efficiency and allow human workers to focus on more strategic initiatives.”

The other LLM AI companies are also focused on building their own AI ‘Intelligence’ layers providing hybrid functionality for multi-agent AI orchestration systems. Especially as we head to humans being augmented by AI agents at scale.

But it useful in these early days of the AI Tech Wave, to see how OpenAI is leading with their course. Stay tuned.

(NOTE: The discussions here are for information purposes only, and not meant as investment advice at any time. Thanks for joining us here)