We might soon see AI step up to the next level, with impending upgrades to artificial intelligence (AI) systems developed by OpenAI and Meta. OpenAI’s GPT-5 will be the new “engine” within the AI chatbot ChatGPT, while Meta’s upgrade will be named Llama 3. Among other things, the current version of Llama powers chatbots on Meta’s social media platforms.

Statements to the media by executives at both OpenAI and Meta suggest that some ability to plan ahead will be incorporated into these upgraded systems. But how exactly will this innovation change the capabilities of AI chatbots?

Imagine you are driving from home to work and want to select the best route – that is, the sequence of choices that is optimal in some sense, based on cost or timing, for example. An AI system would be perfectly capable of choosing the better of two existing routes. But it would be a far more difficult task for it to generate the optimal route from scratch.

A route ultimately consists of a sequence of different choices. However, making individual decisions in isolation is not likely to lead to an optimal overall solution.

For instance, sometimes you have to make a little sacrifice at the start, to reap some benefit later on: maybe joining a slow queue to........

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