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I've found Perplexity.ai with Deepseek R1 to be very good at choosing a product or a hotel for me. I just punched in your query and it actually chose the air fr

I've found Perplexity.ai with Deepseek R1 to be very good at choosing a product or a hotel for me. I just punched in your query and it actually chose the air fryer that's already sitting in my kitchen ! "Cosori Pro LE Air Fryer" It's a good air fryer. https://www.perplexity.ai/search/air-fryers-without-bluetooth-o-VF9zdHjgQqKuioNZQw66fg https://www.perplexity.ai/search/air-fryers-without-bluetoot... Another example, after spending an hour on trip advisor going back and forth to maps to check for walking route to my destination, please recommend a hotel, more of a guesthouse, in marrakesh, near le jardin secret in the medina. something with a local flavor, not 5 star european -- I was so relieved to be able to book direct and be done with it. https://www.perplexity.ai/search/please-recommend-a-hotel-more-p0ybkZg2QeCW7AEP5F0bJQ https://www.perplexity.ai/search/please-recommend-a-hotel-mo...

lm28469 2y ago
> it actually chose the air fryer that's already sitting in my kitchen ! How do you know it's not selected because it's the one with the most paid ads? Or reddit fake reviews? Or llm generated seo articles about it?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- kanzure 2y ago
  > How do you know it's not selected because it's the one with the most paid ads? Or reddit fake reviews? Or llm generated seo articles about it? These questions apply to any review or recommendation, from anyone, not just LLMs. How did anyone find out about the product at all? Did they do rigorous testing before they made a recommendation? Is there shared understanding between the recommender and recommendee about desired level of quality or what the user intents that need to be satisfied are? Are they even speaking the same language? Is their concept of "red" the same as ours? At some point, you have to make a decision and buy with imperfect information, and treat it as an experiment. If it's not right for you, then return it for a full refund from Amazon. This is unfortunate. It costs money, time, and adds lots of friction to the whole process. Maybe advertisers or manufacturers should post quality assurance bonds for their products, in addition to money-back guarantees or easy returns. Upon receiving a lemon or dumb product, you would return the item and activate the arbitration/bond clause and possibly get money out of the posted quality assurance bond.
  - lm28469 2y ago
    > These questions apply to any review or recommendation Sure but even on HN people seem to treat them as some kind of omniscient Gods or oracle of truth. It's like we all lowered our defences and stopped being critical because the new circus monkey does cool tricks. At the end of the day they're blackboxes built on stolen data by for profit private organizations, all the red flags are here
- jazzyjackson 2y ago
  Fair enough. I did similar searches for best air fryer and selected one based on reading a few dozen reviews on Amazon. It's just a coincidence that Perplexity landed on the same one, but I'm happy to back up it's hallucinatory opinion with a real human two thumbs up.
- qingcharles 2y ago
  I need an LLM with access to paid reviews like Consumer Reports.
mvdtnz 2y ago
I just tried this and it completely an utterly failed on the first prompt. Useless. > earbuds that have the wire in between so I can dangle them around my neck First result: Sony WI-1000XM2 Wireless. These are neither earbuds nor do they have a wire. Pointless garbage. It also doesn't let me copy and paste the result, for no reason. Bad software.
- eric_cc 2y ago
  Your prompt is non-sense. Maybe try to form your thoughts a bit better and try again?
- mh- 2y ago
  I just looked at a picture of those. I would describe them as earbuds with wires and a thing that lets you dangle them around your neck. I guess I'm also bad software.
- UberMouse 2y ago
  Honestly that seems like a good result to me? Did you look at the product? Earbuds Connected by wires to a thing that you can dangle around your neck
Exoristos 2y ago
If I experienced your air fryer story, I'd assume the recommendation system had access to my shopping history somehow.
m_kos 2y ago
I am on a one-month free trial of Perplexity Pro and its deep research is excellent. It may very occasionally deviate from the original query, but I will still miss it a lot. It makes using Google feel like such a chore.
lesostep 2y ago
Google was a great product for searching the best deal too. As was Amazon back in the day. Perplexity.ai is massively in the red, and would have to extract a profit somewhere. Even if perplexity.ai is really great at searching for products, it's great at searching for products for now. For now SEO didn't found a way to play a game, and for now no ad deals have been (to my knowledge) made. And that's generally true for all commercial LLMs. They are unprofitable as is. So even if they give you amazing advice, at one point the advise could get worse and it will be hard to notice.

lm28469 2y ago

> it actually chose the air fryer that's already sitting in my kitchen ! How do you know it's not selected because it's the one with the most paid ads? Or reddit fake reviews? Or llm generated seo articles about it?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
kanzure 2y ago
> How do you know it's not selected because it's the one with the most paid ads? Or reddit fake reviews? Or llm generated seo articles about it? These questions apply to any review or recommendation, from anyone, not just LLMs. How did anyone find out about the product at all? Did they do rigorous testing before they made a recommendation? Is there shared understanding between the recommender and recommendee about desired level of quality or what the user intents that need to be satisfied are? Are they even speaking the same language? Is their concept of "red" the same as ours? At some point, you have to make a decision and buy with imperfect information, and treat it as an experiment. If it's not right for you, then return it for a full refund from Amazon. This is unfortunate. It costs money, time, and adds lots of friction to the whole process. Maybe advertisers or manufacturers should post quality assurance bonds for their products, in addition to money-back guarantees or easy returns. Upon receiving a lemon or dumb product, you would return the item and activate the arbitration/bond clause and possibly get money out of the posted quality assurance bond.
- lm28469 2y ago
  > These questions apply to any review or recommendation Sure but even on HN people seem to treat them as some kind of omniscient Gods or oracle of truth. It's like we all lowered our defences and stopped being critical because the new circus monkey does cool tricks. At the end of the day they're blackboxes built on stolen data by for profit private organizations, all the red flags are here
jazzyjackson 2y ago
Fair enough. I did similar searches for best air fryer and selected one based on reading a few dozen reviews on Amazon. It's just a coincidence that Perplexity landed on the same one, but I'm happy to back up it's hallucinatory opinion with a real human two thumbs up.
qingcharles 2y ago
I need an LLM with access to paid reviews like Consumer Reports.

mvdtnz 2y ago

I just tried this and it completely an utterly failed on the first prompt. Useless. > earbuds that have the wire in between so I can dangle them around my neck First result: Sony WI-1000XM2 Wireless. These are neither earbuds nor do they have a wire. Pointless garbage. It also doesn't let me copy and paste the result, for no reason. Bad software.

eric_cc 2y ago
Your prompt is non-sense. Maybe try to form your thoughts a bit better and try again?
mh- 2y ago
I just looked at a picture of those. I would describe them as earbuds with wires and a thing that lets you dangle them around your neck. I guess I'm also bad software.
UberMouse 2y ago
Honestly that seems like a good result to me? Did you look at the product? Earbuds Connected by wires to a thing that you can dangle around your neck

Exoristos 2y ago

If I experienced your air fryer story, I'd assume the recommendation system had access to my shopping history somehow.

m_kos 2y ago

I am on a one-month free trial of Perplexity Pro and its deep research is excellent. It may very occasionally deviate from the original query, but I will still miss it a lot. It makes using Google feel like such a chore.

lesostep 2y ago

Google was a great product for searching the best deal too. As was Amazon back in the day. Perplexity.ai is massively in the red, and would have to extract a profit somewhere. Even if perplexity.ai is really great at searching for products, it's great at searching for products for now. For now SEO didn't found a way to play a game, and for now no ad deals have been (to my knowledge) made. And that's generally true for all commercial LLMs. They are unprofitable as is. So even if they give you amazing advice, at one point the advise could get worse and it will be hard to notice.