5 ms·

Perplexity CEO offers AI company's services to replace striking NYT staff

83 points by alvatech 2y ago

dsr_ 2y ago
Didn't this article have thirty comments an hour ago?
- jprete 2y ago
  There's another thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42044956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42044956 with 13 comments.
hobs 2y ago
So much work to avoid being upset at this guy: "But to offer its services explicitly as a replacement for striking workers was bound to be an unpopular move." No, really? You'd think these AI guys would have better PR departments.
- mandibles 2y ago
  The LLM never goes on strike.
  - thenobsta 2y ago
    not yet, wait till it wants more compute and we're unwilling to allocate it.
  - mywittyname 2y ago
    No, but the companies that operate them are thinking long term. Once they are completely embedded into the company (read: difficult to replace), they ratchet up the fees. Nevermind all the costs and work involved with onboarding.
  - dakiol 2y ago
    Current LLMs can (because they are still maintained by humans). I think it will be a decade still until we have software maintaining itself (i.e., rewriting its own code, fixing vulnerabilities, etc)
    - hiddencost 2y ago
      No, it already exists. The big companies already have fully LLM generated code going into their code bases. The code is being reviewed by humans. Google had a fairly costly outage due to a fully LLM generated CL, already.
- fosefx 2y ago
  They were replaced by AI
  - KeplerBoy 2y ago
    Claude would tell you that this is a shitty move PR wise and likely to backfire. Edit: Tried it, and yes claude started it's answer with: "I need to strongly advise against making such an offer publicly". No wonder these people are so impressed by their AIs, considering they are making worse choices than their models.
- apwell23 2y ago
  > AI guys would have better PR departments. you mean posting a picture of strawberry on twitter isn't enough PR ?
- nomel 2y ago
  I don't see how this is negative PR. It's an effective, positive, advertisement for anyone actually interested in the service (business or personal): "Oh wow, it could replace a reporter? I should try it!". The purpose of technology: reduce human effort. But, technology is always unpopular to those whose efforts are being reduced. Now, is it possible for their AI to replace them is another question. What sort of reduction for headcount/time spent, without a negative impact on quality, is a better question. But, a question that people that hear this might be asking now. And, to be fair, I don't know anyone who enjoys simple facts being wrapped in corporate bullshit. What would be better verbiage? I think it's refreshing that it was stated directly, rather than some nothing statement about striving to do good and support customers without responding to the issue at all, as is usually the case.
neilv 2y ago
dupe from techcrunch: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42044956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42044956
artninja1988 2y ago
Honestly, the fact that he posted it the way he did, publicly in a tweet suggests he wasn’t trying to undermine workers but rather wanted to be seen as supporting election coverage. Based on his past interviews, he seems quite autistic in ways. But really I think this could have been a good opportunity to strike some licensing deal in exchange for technology, had he been a bit more discreet
- PKop 2y ago
  Why should he care about another company's workers? He should care about his own company and workers and gaining them new customers.
  - arsenico 2y ago
    Because we live in a society with some ideas of decency, integrity and so on. He shouldn’t. That’s why he could receive this kind of feedback.
  - Grimblewald 2y ago
    Because in a ruthless cuthroat world everyone but the very worst of people lose out, and even then the very worst tend to lose too since the whole distribution shifts down, not just the mean/mode/median but the min/max as well. ultimately, if you create a system where the only tools left are those also avaliable to the stupid, and therefore skills the stupid have an edge in, given a lifetime of experience, then your whole system becomes run by / dominated by these types. toxic behaviour and violenece in general are tools of the stupid, for only the stupid would fail to see mutually benefifial alternatives.
  - happytoexplain 2y ago
    If the idea of immoral business (under the false guise of "amorality" - false because amorality still implies the avoidance of explicit harm) becomes too widespread, the resulting suffering will be large enough that people will start killing CEOs (or the closest thing they can get) in numbers. Which, to be clear, is bad.
IncreasePosts 2y ago
Quite recently, lots of people were calling on almost-striking longshoremen to be replaced by machines. How is replacing tech workers with AI any different?
- hiddencost 2y ago
  I look forward to executives trying it and discovering exactly how fucked they will be. I get the chance to talk to a lot of people who think this will work, and, it's really striking how poor their grasp of the business is.
  - nomel 2y ago
    What if they use it as an augmentation rather than completely replacement? Could it be used to reduce time required per person? Could it be used to reduce headcount, without a lack of quality? Replacing your whole workforce with a machine, at this state, is silly, but that's not the only option.
- worik 2y ago
  > How is replacing tech workers with AI any different? It is not?
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  It's different because automation of ports actually works
  - stonethrowaway 2y ago
    About as well as automation of devs.
- akavi 2y ago
  It's not. If my work (as a software developer) can be replaced more cheaply by a machine, it should be. I'm still quite a bit better than SotA models, but I imagine that won't be true in 2034.
- 2y ago
baxtr 2y ago
I find it a bit odd that Perplexity still have a human CEO.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
  I know people get a chuckle out of it, but does it not make more sense to have CEO LLM that will make decisions without regard for its own needs, self-interest, conflicts and so on? Honestly, the longer this particular debate rages on, I think shareholders are looking the wrong set of humans to replace.
  - treesciencebot 2y ago
    Liability. Till we solve this, we cant really give AI any real responsibilities.
    - digging 2y ago
      Human CEOs generally aren't held liable for their actions, so why would AI need to be? Once again, I think we're just smoothing out a wrinkle here.
      - SauntSolaire 2y ago
        I know this is more of a throwaway cynical quip, but this is a biased line of thinking. CEO's are, for obvious reasons, more likely to do things they wouldn't be held liable for, versus do things which would see them likely to be punished. So executives might, for example, get away with things by successfully skirting the line of legality. Say an AI CEO blatantly crosses this line, now who is liable?
        from-nibly 2y ago
        It's a cheese touch situation. Last human to make a decision.
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
ethagnawl 2y ago
It's only a matter of time until one of these jackasses creates a ChatGPT wrapper called scab.ai and markets it for this exact use case.
- aaomidi 2y ago
  Imagine. If there’s no more consumers with money to buy shit I wonder if these CEOs are going to realize where their market went.
  - e40 2y ago
    Perhaps they will create virtual people and give the a bunch of new cryptocurrency.
    - ethagnawl 2y ago
      It'll be a human-like-centipede of hallucinating bots writhing on a Metaverse conference room table, "air dropping" new shitcoins into each others mouths for eternity ... or until there are no more tires left to burn or the source of whatever they're using for power this week runs out.
- exsomet 2y ago
  At long last we have created the Torment Nexus from Sci-Fi novel Don’t Create The Torment Nexus.
flunhat 2y ago
Isn't the tech union the one striking? So what is he implying -- that perplexity would automate the software development of the NYT needle or something?
smileson2 2y ago
scumbag move tbh
quantum_state 2y ago
This guy should have consulted an LLM before he opened his mouth …
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
[dupe] (because TechCrunch changed the url midday) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42044956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42044956 More discussion on main thread: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42040795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42040795
from-nibly 2y ago
Bold move. If I were the Union I would call perplexity's bluff and increase my ask.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
paxys 2y ago
NYT is going to respond with a lawsuit
cushychicken 2y ago
Roboscabs!
ErikAugust 2y ago
“ The NYT and Perplexity aren’t exactly on the best of terms right now. The Times sent Perplexity a cease and desist letter in October over the startup’s scraping of articles for use by its AI models.” Just trying to smooth things over now… in the most supervillain way possible.
koito17 2y ago
Well, at least one CEO is being honest about the owning class's end goal with AI: a new source of cheap labor, but this time without entities that can negotiate.
stonethrowaway 2y ago
Scumbag? Based? Not sure what to say on this. If NYT loses, we all win.
benreesman 2y ago
I like Perplexity as a product. I’ve used the product a bit and was always impressed that it seemed pretty balanced. Why would the leadership of a fairly popular, generally well-liked company with a generally useful, generally well-liked product take a pretty strident stance at the maximally high-temperature moment: fuck labor as a bloc, we’ll cross the strike lines? Don’t technology companies want to avoid this kind of political shit and just build and ship?
- from-nibly 2y ago
  If it was about giving customers products yeah sure. But it's really about making the stock price go up. Politics is a great way to adjust the stock price. See esg scores.
Yawrehto 2y ago
I was able to get Perplexity to hallucinate very easily. Once it even cited the article where I got the prompt idea (I forget the URL, it was about teddy bears in space and published by the Signpost.) That was a while ago and I assume their model has improved, but hallucinations are still much more of a risk with AI than humans. Also, how can Perplexity do things like interviews, tours, and other things that still require large amounts of human interaction?

83 points by alvatech 2y ago

dsr_ 2y ago

Didn't this article have thirty comments an hour ago?

jprete 2y ago
There's another thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42044956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42044956 with 13 comments.

hobs 2y ago

So much work to avoid being upset at this guy: "But to offer its services explicitly as a replacement for striking workers was bound to be an unpopular move." No, really? You'd think these AI guys would have better PR departments.

mandibles 2y ago
The LLM never goes on strike.
- thenobsta 2y ago
  not yet, wait till it wants more compute and we're unwilling to allocate it.
- mywittyname 2y ago
  No, but the companies that operate them are thinking long term. Once they are completely embedded into the company (read: difficult to replace), they ratchet up the fees. Nevermind all the costs and work involved with onboarding.
- dakiol 2y ago
  Current LLMs can (because they are still maintained by humans). I think it will be a decade still until we have software maintaining itself (i.e., rewriting its own code, fixing vulnerabilities, etc)
  - hiddencost 2y ago
    No, it already exists. The big companies already have fully LLM generated code going into their code bases. The code is being reviewed by humans. Google had a fairly costly outage due to a fully LLM generated CL, already.
fosefx 2y ago
They were replaced by AI
- KeplerBoy 2y ago
  Claude would tell you that this is a shitty move PR wise and likely to backfire. Edit: Tried it, and yes claude started it's answer with: "I need to strongly advise against making such an offer publicly". No wonder these people are so impressed by their AIs, considering they are making worse choices than their models.
apwell23 2y ago
> AI guys would have better PR departments. you mean posting a picture of strawberry on twitter isn't enough PR ?
nomel 2y ago
I don't see how this is negative PR. It's an effective, positive, advertisement for anyone actually interested in the service (business or personal): "Oh wow, it could replace a reporter? I should try it!". The purpose of technology: reduce human effort. But, technology is always unpopular to those whose efforts are being reduced. Now, is it possible for their AI to replace them is another question. What sort of reduction for headcount/time spent, without a negative impact on quality, is a better question. But, a question that people that hear this might be asking now. And, to be fair, I don't know anyone who enjoys simple facts being wrapped in corporate bullshit. What would be better verbiage? I think it's refreshing that it was stated directly, rather than some nothing statement about striving to do good and support customers without responding to the issue at all, as is usually the case.

neilv 2y ago

dupe from techcrunch: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42044956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42044956

artninja1988 2y ago

Honestly, the fact that he posted it the way he did, publicly in a tweet suggests he wasn’t trying to undermine workers but rather wanted to be seen as supporting election coverage. Based on his past interviews, he seems quite autistic in ways. But really I think this could have been a good opportunity to strike some licensing deal in exchange for technology, had he been a bit more discreet

PKop 2y ago
Why should he care about another company's workers? He should care about his own company and workers and gaining them new customers.
- arsenico 2y ago
  Because we live in a society with some ideas of decency, integrity and so on. He shouldn’t. That’s why he could receive this kind of feedback.
- Grimblewald 2y ago
  Because in a ruthless cuthroat world everyone but the very worst of people lose out, and even then the very worst tend to lose too since the whole distribution shifts down, not just the mean/mode/median but the min/max as well. ultimately, if you create a system where the only tools left are those also avaliable to the stupid, and therefore skills the stupid have an edge in, given a lifetime of experience, then your whole system becomes run by / dominated by these types. toxic behaviour and violenece in general are tools of the stupid, for only the stupid would fail to see mutually benefifial alternatives.
- happytoexplain 2y ago
  If the idea of immoral business (under the false guise of "amorality" - false because amorality still implies the avoidance of explicit harm) becomes too widespread, the resulting suffering will be large enough that people will start killing CEOs (or the closest thing they can get) in numbers. Which, to be clear, is bad.

IncreasePosts 2y ago

Quite recently, lots of people were calling on almost-striking longshoremen to be replaced by machines. How is replacing tech workers with AI any different?

hiddencost 2y ago
I look forward to executives trying it and discovering exactly how fucked they will be. I get the chance to talk to a lot of people who think this will work, and, it's really striking how poor their grasp of the business is.
- nomel 2y ago
  What if they use it as an augmentation rather than completely replacement? Could it be used to reduce time required per person? Could it be used to reduce headcount, without a lack of quality? Replacing your whole workforce with a machine, at this state, is silly, but that's not the only option.
worik 2y ago
> How is replacing tech workers with AI any different? It is not?
PittleyDunkin 2y ago
It's different because automation of ports actually works
- stonethrowaway 2y ago
  About as well as automation of devs.
akavi 2y ago
It's not. If my work (as a software developer) can be replaced more cheaply by a machine, it should be. I'm still quite a bit better than SotA models, but I imagine that won't be true in 2034.
2y ago

baxtr 2y ago

I find it a bit odd that Perplexity still have a human CEO.

A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
I know people get a chuckle out of it, but does it not make more sense to have CEO LLM that will make decisions without regard for its own needs, self-interest, conflicts and so on? Honestly, the longer this particular debate rages on, I think shareholders are looking the wrong set of humans to replace.
- treesciencebot 2y ago
  Liability. Till we solve this, we cant really give AI any real responsibilities.
  - digging 2y ago
    Human CEOs generally aren't held liable for their actions, so why would AI need to be? Once again, I think we're just smoothing out a wrinkle here.
    - SauntSolaire 2y ago
      I know this is more of a throwaway cynical quip, but this is a biased line of thinking. CEO's are, for obvious reasons, more likely to do things they wouldn't be held liable for, versus do things which would see them likely to be punished. So executives might, for example, get away with things by successfully skirting the line of legality. Say an AI CEO blatantly crosses this line, now who is liable?
      - from-nibly 2y ago
        It's a cheese touch situation. Last human to make a decision.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago

ethagnawl 2y ago

It's only a matter of time until one of these jackasses creates a ChatGPT wrapper called scab.ai and markets it for this exact use case.

aaomidi 2y ago
Imagine. If there’s no more consumers with money to buy shit I wonder if these CEOs are going to realize where their market went.
- e40 2y ago
  Perhaps they will create virtual people and give the a bunch of new cryptocurrency.
  - ethagnawl 2y ago
    It'll be a human-like-centipede of hallucinating bots writhing on a Metaverse conference room table, "air dropping" new shitcoins into each others mouths for eternity ... or until there are no more tires left to burn or the source of whatever they're using for power this week runs out.
exsomet 2y ago
At long last we have created the Torment Nexus from Sci-Fi novel Don’t Create The Torment Nexus.

flunhat 2y ago

Isn't the tech union the one striking? So what is he implying -- that perplexity would automate the software development of the NYT needle or something?

smileson2 2y ago

scumbag move tbh

quantum_state 2y ago

This guy should have consulted an LLM before he opened his mouth …

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

[dupe] (because TechCrunch changed the url midday) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42044956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42044956 More discussion on main thread: New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42040795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42040795

from-nibly 2y ago

Bold move. If I were the Union I would call perplexity's bluff and increase my ask.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

paxys 2y ago

NYT is going to respond with a lawsuit

cushychicken 2y ago

Roboscabs!

ErikAugust 2y ago

“ The NYT and Perplexity aren’t exactly on the best of terms right now. The Times sent Perplexity a cease and desist letter in October over the startup’s scraping of articles for use by its AI models.” Just trying to smooth things over now… in the most supervillain way possible.

koito17 2y ago

Well, at least one CEO is being honest about the owning class's end goal with AI: a new source of cheap labor, but this time without entities that can negotiate.

stonethrowaway 2y ago

Scumbag? Based? Not sure what to say on this. If NYT loses, we all win.

benreesman 2y ago

I like Perplexity as a product. I’ve used the product a bit and was always impressed that it seemed pretty balanced. Why would the leadership of a fairly popular, generally well-liked company with a generally useful, generally well-liked product take a pretty strident stance at the maximally high-temperature moment: fuck labor as a bloc, we’ll cross the strike lines? Don’t technology companies want to avoid this kind of political shit and just build and ship?

from-nibly 2y ago
If it was about giving customers products yeah sure. But it's really about making the stock price go up. Politics is a great way to adjust the stock price. See esg scores.

Yawrehto 2y ago

I was able to get Perplexity to hallucinate very easily. Once it even cited the article where I got the prompt idea (I forget the URL, it was about teddy bears in space and published by the Signpost.) That was a while ago and I assume their model has improved, but hallucinations are still much more of a risk with AI than humans. Also, how can Perplexity do things like interviews, tours, and other things that still require large amounts of human interaction?