Minerva vs ChatGPT Plugins

Minerva is a large language model from Google Research built to solve math and science questions through step-by-step written reasoning. It reads problems that mix plain English with LaTeX notation, then writes out solutions involving arithmetic, algebra, and symbolic steps. The model was trained on scientific papers and web pages where mathematical formatting was kept intact, rather than stripped during preprocessing.

Most math-capable models lean on external tools like Python interpreters or calculators at inference time. Minerva takes the opposite bet: it generates full worked solutions from the model weights alone, using chain-of-thought prompting and majority voting across multiple sampled answers. That informal approach covers a wider range of problem types than formal theorem provers, but the trade-off is answers cannot be machine-verified the way Coq or Lean proofs can.

Researchers studying quantitative reasoning in language models use Minerva as a reference point for STEM benchmark performance. The public sample explorer hosts 110 solved problems across algebra, physics, chemistry, and other topics, so anyone can read through how the model arrived at each answer. Educators and ML engineers reviewing benchmark methodology will find the published MATH, MMLU-STEM, GSM8k, and OCWCourses scores useful for comparing against newer models.

OpenAI follows an iterative deployment philosophy, and as part of this approach, it is gradually releasing plugins for ChatGPT. The purpose of this gradual release is to study the real-world use of the plugins, assess their impact, and identify any safety and alignment challenges that may arise. Getting these aspects right is essential for OpenAI to achieve its mission.

Since the launch of ChatGPT, users have expressed interest in having access to plugins, and many developers are experimenting with similar ideas. OpenAI is initially rolling out plugins to a small set of users and plans to gradually increase access as it learns more. After an alpha period, API users who want to integrate plugins into their products will also have access. OpenAI is excited to build a community that will help shape the future of the human-AI interaction paradigm.

Developers who have been invited off the waitlist can use OpenAI's documentation to build a plugin for ChatGPT. Once the plugin is created, it is listed in the prompt shown to the language model, along with documentation that instructs the model on how to use each one. The first set of plugins has been created by Expedia, FiscalNote, Instacart, KAYAK, Klarna, Milo, OpenTable, Shopify, Slack, Speak, Wolfram, and Zapier.