Scantlings

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)

Thanks Beau, very interesting! I asked it a stupid question (where does the Universe stop/end?) and it came back (almost instantly) with some very credible answers that were well-written, too.

My second question was: When will Perplexity issue an IPO?

I don't know how teachers will deal with this stuff. I told Seattle Central Colleges I was done with reviewing scholarship applications...way too much weird stuff in last year's batch of "Personal Statements."

Thanks for the link though!

Oh man, this is fun. No wait, holy sh*t this is amazing!
Your comparison to Fred Flintstone is certainly apt!

I'm over my one-free month now with Perplexity, and just renewed at $20/month.

My take on it is that Perplexity (especially with "co-pilot" turned on) is saving me a lot of time trying to get past all the "Related Advertisements" that come up as the lead results from Google, and more importantly, Co-Pilot helps me refine the way I think about the search term. I'm using it on my phone as well as computer (same subscription $$s for multiple devices under one name) and the ability to get a good answer by asking with a voice.

One other item, I've turned my "default" search engine to DuckDuckGo so that I stop getting all he Google spam. It seems to work fine.