OpenAI, ChatGPT, and the MEP Industry

OpenAI is an AI research and development company. According to their website, their mission is "to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity."

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has shared his vision to democratize AI and protect it from potential misuse. Some might say that in the long run, their goal is to change everything, but for now, they are working on the OpenAI Platform.

The platform fosters a community of AI enthusiasts and makes AI technologies more accessible to developers and researchers.

Earlier last week, Altman announced some new models and developers' products, taking OpenAI one step closer to becoming a true platform.

So what's new and why it's exciting?

1. It follows instructions better: GPT-4 Turbo performs better on tasks that require the careful following of instructions and paying attention to details.

2. New multimodal capabilities: "We heard your feedback. That model picker was extremely annoying," said Altman. The new updates will automatically pick the right tool from image creation, text, and text-to-speech (TTS).

3. Developer assistant: Allows users to create chatbots and agent-like experiences within their applications. It includes handling a lot of the heavy-lifting functions developers had to perform on their own (Code Interpreter, Retrieval, function calls, etc.)

4. Input longer prompts: You can now input super detailed and long prompts. As Altman points out, "GPT-4 Turbo supports up to 128,000 tokens of context," though tokens aren't entirely words; think of it as having a limit of the number of words you will find in a 300-page book.

5. New knowledge cut-off: "We are just as annoyed as all of you, probably more, that GPT-4's knowledge about the world ended in 2021," said Altman. The new model can now answer with more updated context and its knowledge covers everything through April 2023.

But what has all of that got to do with MEP?

If you've reached this point, you might be wondering "How does this relate to MEP"?

We're convinced that AI has the potential to revolutionize the industry, reshaping workflows, roles, and responsibilities for all stakeholders.

AI can efficiently handle numerous tedious and repetitive tasks, streamlining the workload for MEP subcontractors and engineers. This includes automating takeoffs, generating templates and documents, and aiding in design, among many others.

We're excited to introduce Pelles GPT, a specialized tool exclusively designed for MEP subcontractors' estimators and engineers. With this platform, you can effortlessly upload your construction documents (CDs) or bid packages and quickly find the information you need or get answers to your questions in just seconds.

While OpenAI's GPT already delivers impressive outcomes for MEP professionals, the real test lies in tailoring AI models to provide customized, high-value solutions specific to the MEP sector. This endeavor presents an exciting yet unmastered frontier.