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It's a shame because Perplexity is BY FAR the most useful AI tool out there. This shows they have clearly no vision and won't be able to keep afloat.
by kissgyorgy 2y ago
It's a shame because Perplexity is BY FAR the most useful AI tool out there. This shows they have clearly no vision and won't be able to keep afloat.
- keyle 2y agoPlease explain why do you think they're the most useful by far? Just curious of such a bold statement in a highly competitive space.
- vunderba 2y agoNot OP but it used to be that if you wanted an LLM that would cite its sources - Perplexity was one of the only games in town that did a really good job combining an LLM with an active search engine. It was also much better for posing questions that required the most up-to-date knowledge.
- hshshshshsh 2y agoWhy do you sound like a bot.
- jazzyjackson 2y agoProbably because bots are trained to sound like people.
- Xmd5a 2y agoSearch is the most if not only useful application of LLMs. In this space there is also Phind. It seems I use Perplexity as often as Google nowadays.
- kissgyorgy 2y agoIt starts with a search and reasoning from there. Cites the sources in the middle of the sentences so you can just click and verify, see the whole context. It blows every "model only" service because it's 100x more accurate. I use it instead of Google for every search now.
- quantadev 2y agoOr due to their power, they've already secretly been taken over by the US Gov't. That's not really a "big conspiracy theory" at this point. I was mocked by the left for years for saying that the Gov't was involved in Facebook censorship. Turns out I was right. The biggest battle our Gov't has to wage is the battle for hearts and minds, and the control of information, and so they're trying to get in as deeply rooted as possible with every big AI company.
- mjmsmith 2y agoAre you referring to the firehose of covid misinformation spewed out of Facebook, or some other grift?
- amyames 2y agoThat’s the bulk of the “justifiable” censorship but if you dig into the [largely overrated] “Twitter files,” sometimes they even got mad about jokes.
- quantadev 2y agoTo be clear I wasn't blaming just the Gov't for all the censorship, because 99% of Facebook employees (including Zuck himself) were strongly in favor of censoring all conservative viewpoints, as well, and were in lock-step with Big Gov't controlling speech. Zuck recently tried to blame it all on the FEDs (on JRE podcast) but he was obviously lying because Facebook even built a special portal for the FEDs to log into, for moderating/controlling the public, so he was the ring-leader of all the censorship, for about a decade.
- jeromegv 2y agoAnd yet Twitter is censoring progressive viewpoints and even skewed the algo toward promoting a certain political candidate and yet not a single word from those free speech warriors. https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/17/24298669/musk-trump-endorsement-x-boosting-republican-posts-july-algorithm-change https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/17/24298669/musk-trump-endo...
- mcmcmc 2y agoPerplexity are also flagrant copyright violators
- gruez 2y agoMore than every other AI company?
- visarga 2y agoBecause they summarize and cite sources or because their models were trained on copyrighted materials? Summarization and training should be tranformative, and the user questions add that element of novel purpose to the original materials that should make the output non derivative. But most of their responses are one time use, nobody is ever returning to them.
- mcmcmc 2y agoNo, because they plagiarize https://www.wired.com/story/perplexity-plagiarized-our-story-about-how-perplexity-is-a-bullshit-machine/ https://www.wired.com/story/perplexity-plagiarized-our-story...
- paxys 2y agoPerplexity is useful as a thin layer of product over a base model. As Sam Altman said, eventually all such startups will be steamrolled by companies that own the models.
- crimsoneer 2y agoI mean, thanks to llama/deepseek, the models are now essentially free.
- anon373839 2y agoSam Altman is not a credible figure, and that quote was rubbish IMO. There’s no inherent reason that foundation model trainers (the dumb pipes of the AI era) will win RAG by default. Apps like Perplexity aren’t even really constrained by the strength of the model. The secret sauce is the information retrieval, where OpenAI has no special advantage. But Google sure does…
- dmazin 2y agoHe might say that, but I think in fact the opposite is true. The models are getting commodified. The real value lies in distribution (access to customers) and consumer product skills.
- gitaarik 2y agoYeah, but the distributers are always depend on the models. And they'll have to pay their licenses. And the ones who control the model have quite an influence on all of us.
- dmazin 2y agoThey don’t have to pay for licenses for open models. Although I’m not sure if Meta’s licenses have some sort of restriction on who can use it.
- ProllyInfamous 2y agoI have been using / fanboi'ing Perplexity since January 2022; overall, I am disappointed in the direction their product has been heading. While it is still the first URL I visit when I want apprentice-level help, I don't think this will be true for much longer. If anybody at perplexity wants my more-direct feedback (beyond what I've submitted via your platform's conversations), my postal is listed in /hn/bio (I do not use email, so if your platform eventually `requires` this it's an immediate disusership from me dawg).
- dimitri-vs 2y agoI would have agreed up until a few weeks ago. ChatGPT search is getting better, but kind of superficial so I still preferred Perplexity. But the new Gemini Deep Research is waaay better than Perplexity at deeper Internet searches and I imagine only will continue to get better.
- Havoc 2y agoDeepseek's search is pretty much on par with perplexity already
- doctorpangloss 2y agoHa ha, Perplexity is the green bubble of chatbots.
- dmazin 2y agoAlways interested in alternatives. What do you suggest?