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Parallel Tools

One of the latest capabilities that OpenAI has recently introduced is parallel function calling. To learn more you can read up on this

Experimental Feature

This feature is currently in preview and is subject to change. only supported by the gpt-4-turbo-preview model.

Understanding Parallel Function Calling

By using parallel function callings that allow you to call multiple functions in a single request, you can significantly reduce the latency of your application without having to use tricks with now one builds a schema.

import openai
import instructor

from typing import Iterable, Literal
from pydantic import BaseModel


class Weather(BaseModel):
    location: str
    units: Literal["imperial", "metric"]


class GoogleSearch(BaseModel):
    query: str


client = instructor.patch(openai.OpenAI(), mode=instructor.Mode.PARALLEL_TOOLS)  # (1)!

function_calls = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="gpt-4-turbo-preview",
    messages=[
        {"role": "system", "content": "You must always use tools"},
        {
            "role": "user",
            "content": "What is the weather in toronto and dallas and who won the super bowl?",
        },
    ],
    response_model=Iterable[Weather | GoogleSearch],  # (2)!
)

for fc in function_calls:
    print(fc)
    #> location='Toronto' units='metric'
    #> location='Dallas' units='imperial'
    #> query='super bowl winner'
  1. Set the mode to PARALLEL_TOOLS to enable parallel function calling.
  2. Set the response model to Iterable[Weather | GoogleSearch] to indicate that the response will be a list of Weather and GoogleSearch objects. This is necessary because the response will be a list of objects, and we need to specify the types of the objects in the list.

Noticed that the response_model Must be in the form Iterable[Type1 | Type2 | ...] or Iterable[Type1] where Type1 and Type2 are the types of the objects that will be returned in the response.