All,
I think I've stumbled upon the best example of AI getting a great grip on a problem. Unsurprisingly, it is being used by a start-up that has x-Open-AI and Google folks working there. The tool is called Perplexity and it just raised a heap of money that valued the company at over $500,000,000.00. All the "hot" VCs are involved. Can you spell BUBBLE!?!
All that said, Perplexity is probably the first shot at taking down Google's core business that I've seen. I have no inside info, but I'm guessing the lawyers at Google are working nights to insure that none of their technology is buried inside Perplexity. But, this is going to be fun to watch as OpenAI is an old customer of mine and puts all their software in the "open source" community - meaning that anyone can read it and use it with certain restrictions.
What motivate me to take this particular tool seriously, vs a toy like ChatGTP, is that some of the best journalists in the biz told me they are using it as a quick tool to bring them up to speed on all sorts of topics. That's a really useful tool as anyone who has tried to use Google to do serious research on topic will know. Perplexity makes Google look like it's a stone age version of a wheel. Think Fred Flinstone here.
There are two other reasons to pay attention to Perpelxity.
One - They have a subscription based model, currently $20/month, and people are paying it because the software is that good. Obviously, Google could give something like this away free and crush them, but both the Justice Department and Perplexity's lawyers would have a field day with that.
Two - Perplexity claims that they don't use their customer's search patterns as a revenue source, which Google does all the time. This breaks the age old business model of the internet that is best summed up by: "If you're getting the use of a lot of complex computing hardware and software for 'free', then you are the product that the software company is delivering to their paying customers, and you're privacy is a joke." Every company offering free services does this. EG: Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.. etc..... etc......
It'll be fun to see how Perplexity does. I've been using it for a few weeks now and it is amazingly helpful for broad questions, and less so for specific questions in a small domain (EG: Sailboat Racing, or Cardiac Research)