OpenAI quietly improves control capabilities in its Assistants API, making it easier for developers to handle files when building AI assistants. The enhanced file search control in the Assistants API aims to help people building AI agents improve their responses. These improvements allow developers to adjust the way agents select information to generate responses. They can examine file search results and adjust the behavior of the "file search tool ranker to change the relevance required before the results are used to generate a response". "We have just launched enhanced file search control capabilities in the Assistants API to help improve the relevance of your assistant's responses. You can now examine the search results returned by the tool and configure their ranking." - OpenAI Developers (@OpenAIDevs) August 29, 2024 OpenAI introduced the Assistants API in November 2023, describing it as a small step towards fully autonomous AI agents. The Assistants API allows developers to use OpenAI's existing models and provide specific instructions when building assistants for different applications. It also allows them to utilize other tools in the OpenAI ecosystem. The Assistants API enables people to create assistants that can "converse" with other agents. While OpenAI states that assistants built with the Assistants API still require guidance - unlike agents capable of independently completing tasks - it is still a step in the right direction for developers looking to build more autonomous AI applications. It seems that many people have been searching for a way to better fine-tune their assistants, as OpenAI's updates have received reassuring responses. "This looks like a big deal. So far, I've mostly ignored OpenAI's RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) product because there's no detailed information on how it works (such as chunking strategies, relevance mechanisms, etc.), so I couldn't make an informed decision to build it effectively - but these changes seem to address that." - Simon Willison (@simonw) August 30, 2024 "One of the features I wanted the most." - McKay Wrigley (@mckaywrigley) August 30, 2024 "This is very interesting. Will GPT also offer options to control these features within the app? It would be great if they can be modified." - Nick Dobos (@NickADobos) August 30, 2024 AI agents, which are AI systems capable of performing tasks for users with minimal instructions or prompts, are a major goal for many companies in the AI field. The idea is to free humans from tedious tasks, such as booking flights, and let AI agents or assistants handle them. For many businesses, AI assistants can automatically fill out forms or extract information from datasets when they notice human employees engaging in specific activities, such as interacting with customers. Other companies have also provided platforms to simplify the construction of AI agents. Google recently open-sourced its AI agent software platform, Oscar. Meanwhile, companies like Salesforce have started releasing enterprise-specific agents for customers. AI agents are still relatively new and have plenty of room for improvement, which is where features like OpenAI's file search control come into play. Additionally, there is currently no comprehensive way to evaluate the accuracy of current AI agents, and some reports indicate a lack of certain benchmarks for testing agents.