New Technology, New Ideas! ChatGPT's Functions
I'd been reading about ChatGPT's "functions" lately. As a LangChain user, I'd been using agents with a lot of excitement about the possibilities for getting LLMs to do something other than spew out nicely formatted strings, not that there's anything wrong with that.
In fact, if you try out Circibot, and ask it about the weather in Portland, it'll use a LangChain agent to go out and find it for you. But functions are sort of a "native" version of that agent functionality. You supply the function's definition to the OpenAI API, and it will decide which function to call and parse out the arguments.
I had to give that a go!
The Problem with Our Slackbot
One thing that members of my team do at The Day Job is IT. And IT involves a lot of tickets. There's always plenty going wrong, and in order to bring as much order to the chaos as possible, we use a ticketing system to track work and make sure nothing falls between the cracks.
I've written before about our Slackbot. It's great. Now, using ChatGPT and "RAG" it can answer all kinds of questions, asked all kinds of ways. It's also getting better and better at answering them in useful formats as we tweak the prompts.
But it doesn't actually do anything. It just answers. After that, you're on your own.
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One type of question it's often asked is "How do I get help with my computer?" And, it will dutifully tell you to go visit the IT Support Slack channel or send an email.
So, you might go to the Slack channel and ask for help. The most likely answer "Sure, send an email." So, you might have now told the bot that you've got a problem. Then, you might have told Slack you have a problem. And, after that, you STILL have to send an email.
I hate email.
Low Hanging Fruit Usually Has Bugs
Well, cut to the chase. I decided this was the perfect use case for these functions I'd been reading about. Watch the Slackbot's messages, and if there's mention of needing IT help, just file the damn ticket.
They are going to have a parade for me this time. I know it.
Except our ticketing system doesn't have an API that allows you to file tickets for someone. They can file them. You can file them with email. You can even look at tickets. But you cannot file them.
After a couple of hours reading docs, building tests, and contacting their support team (and helpful volunteers), I learned that it simply isn't possible. You can't send an email for that person. You can't call the API.
Not Everything Is Advancing at AI's Pace
It's interesting following along with the rocket ride advancement of generative AI. The LangChain stuff changes almost as fast as ChatGPT does, itself. You start to get used to it.
But then you talk to an old school tech company. They have customers. They don't have billions of dollars. They're just trying to keep their stuff running so people can keep using it as they have for years.
When I lived in San Francisco, it seemed like everyone knew everything about what was going on in the tech space. Then, I moved to Portland, and... yeah, not that. People had other kinds of jobs. They knew about other things. Beer. Strip clubs. Internet? Mmm... heard of it.
Working on AI so much lately, I forget that to most people, it's just magic. Or secretly sentient and planning our demise. But doing stuff with it? Like what? Time travel?
AI-generated IT tickets are going to have to wait until the folks at the ticket place get caught up on the rest of their tickets. Meanwhile, have a beer. We'll get back to you.