5 ms·

Personal Computer by Perplexity

223 points by josephwegner 7mo ago

dakial1 7mo ago
So Perplexity's openclaw? Hopefully more secure?
- georgemcbay 7mo ago
  > So Perplexity's openclaw? Hopefully more secure? Given the inherent unpredictability of LLMs, I'm not convinced that an openclaw-like system but with more security features bolted on top is really a positive in the sense that the false sense of absolute security probably outweighs whatever actual security has been added. It is easier to understand that openclaw is definitely insecure.
gtowey 7mo ago
> There is a kill switch ...because this thing will go rogue faster than you can blink. I swear, it's like nobody at the company even reads the slop they're generating or thinks about it for any amount of time. In what world is advertising a kill switch as one of its essential features a positive? It's basically admitting from the start that this is unreliable.
- observationist 7mo ago
  They replaced their production staff with clawbot, it's all part of the plan. There's a sense of "early bitcoin" around clawbot and other agent frameworks. I think if you wait for another 2 years for it to mature, you'll have missed out as if you waited ten years after bitcoin began. They're insecure and janky, sure, but on the other hand you've got millions of dollars of compute and tens of thousands of very motivated developers working on making them secure, reliable, and competent. There's something magical about AI that actually gets real work done while you're doing other things, and that's what Perplexity is probably hoping to sell. Just need a reliable local model, though - AirLLM, other hacks allow you to run bigger models more slowly, so you can build out a completely API-free scheme to run pretty capable agents even without big GPUs. Could be a Moravec's paradox thing - all these people are thinking that the solution looks enticingly within reach, but it might be an absolutely horribly complicated quagmire with no easy solution short of AGI. I'd bet on clawbots and agents being very secure and great to work with in the very near term, though.
waldothedog 7mo ago
Curious if this page is weirdly cropped on the sides for anyone else?
HumanOstrich 7mo ago
Stop posting AI slop, especially slop pull requests like the one you made to OpenClaw. Learn the first thing about a project you want to monetize and make fake contributions to. For example, OpenClaw is overwhelmed with slop PRs and the author has talked about this a lot.
aaronbrethorst 7mo ago
Oh no, April Fool's Day is going to be tremendously awful this year, isn't it
- ch4s3 7mo ago
  It's been perpetual April 1st since November 30th, 2022.
  - fragmede 7mo ago
    September, surely.
    - ch4s3 7mo ago
      No that’s for people.
    - aspenmayer 7mo ago
      Wake me up when September ends.
recursive 7mo ago
> the computer lives with you. What does this mean? The computer isn't alive. It's physically located on my person? Phones and watches have already cracked this. If I say "Bob lives with me", that just mean that they generally share a residence with me. Desktop PCs already do that. I just don't understand what's even intended by this.
- moritzwarhier 7mo ago
  > I just don't understand what's even intended by this. I might be misinterpreting, but according to the landing page, this is the intention: > Personal Computer gives Perplexity Computer and the Comet Assistant always-on, local access to your machine's files, apps, and sessions through a continuously running compact desktop. > It's a persistent digital proxy of you. Controllable from any device, anywhere. That being said, the grandeur and bombastic language also seems fitting for something less sinister, like an even worse version of MS Recall maybe? Combined with, let's say... agents! That's it! You Personal Computer is your agent and not only may act on your behalf, it also communicates your preferences and intentions. Futuristic, right?
- thedanbob 7mo ago
  > What does this mean? The computer isn't alive. But they want you to think of it as alive. They're anthropomorphizing it.
  - recursive 7mo ago
    If you stop paying this subscription, this living computer with the googly puppy eyes gets it. You wouldn't want anything bad to happen to your best friend, would you? soft whimpering sounds
    - inquirerGeneral 7mo ago
      [dead]
    - superultra 7mo ago
      We thought we did but we never left the Clippy era did we
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
d--b 7mo ago
OH so that's why it's called Perplexity!
QQ00 7mo ago
Openclaw + Microsoft Recall = Personal computer by perplexity. At least this is my interpretation from reading that web page.
jkestner 7mo ago
Sneaky use of an almost Garamond, but the copy ain't Chiat\Day.
password54321 7mo ago
No moat. If you rely on OpenAI / Google / Anthropic you are doomed.
- chrismarlow9 7mo ago
  Do you feel the same about AWS?
  - paxys 7mo ago
    Which side are you implying AWS is on?
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - horsawlarway 7mo ago
    Personally - yes. They may not come after all the niche companies, but they definitely come after the most successful markets, especially those with low effort moats. Same goes for relying on the Apple/Google app stores (ex - Apple literally got slapped in court for copying successful apps and then pushing their offering to the top of their stores... talk about wildly abusive behavior). I may still choose to use AWS/GCP/Azure while trying to find product-market fit as an immature startup, but I'd look real, REAL hard at ditching them as soon as possible afterwards. Unless you have particularly bursty workloads, they aren't even a good cost saving measure anymore.
    - hsuduebc2 7mo ago
      Amazon do absolutely the same, they just rip off products with best margin and lowest effort and start them reselling themselves. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-india-rigging/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-i...
ChrisArchitect 7mo ago
Blog post: https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/everything-is-computer https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/everything-is-computer
- echoangle 7mo ago
  Is that a reference to Trump in the Tesla? https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9fza3s https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9fza3s
par 7mo ago
read it and have no idea what it does
- cedws 7mo ago
  I think it's an LLM wrapper.
- weezing 7mo ago
  it spies. everything.
gensym 7mo ago
Zombo.com
- viksit 7mo ago
  underrated comment haha. made my day
- seeingnature 7mo ago
  You can do anything on zombocom I thought of zombo.com the other day and booted it up. There is maybe no other website that continues to bring me as much joy as zombocom
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
claysmithr 7mo ago
Wow they designed a computer I don’t want
- ncr100 7mo ago
  Say more?
- Zambyte 7mo ago
  > Personal Computer runs on a dedicated Mac mini that can run 24/7, connected to your local apps and Perplexity’s secure servers. https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/everything-is-computer https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/everything-is-computer They designed a program (copied OpenClaw) and called it a computer
  - neal_jones 7mo ago
    Yea, but since they link to a page where they describe openclaw as “malware reading your text messages” I’m assuming they like to think of this as something more evolved
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
bisonbear 7mo ago
sounds like it's another openclaw-as-a-service provider?
paxys 7mo ago
Whatever happened to Preplexity? They were all the rage a year or two ago, and now I hear...nothing. Is the product still being used? Making money? Or just overtaken by the base LLMs it was relying on?
- realityfactchex 7mo ago
  It's still there. For Joe Shmoe, in terms of general purpose, ask it a question, LLM use, Perplexity is solidly in the following lineup, as I understand it: - Perplexity: This one has been promoted on (insert general audience media skewing toward the older set) enough to be a household name still. - ChatGPT: General people in some demographics (see immediately above) are averse to this, on account of negative publicity its parent company has received. (Still very strong popularity and positive sentiment in some demographics, though) - Claude: Some semi-literates have glommed onto this one, possibly as a result of its more recent success among the developer set. - Grok: People can be either for or against, based on how they feel about its owning company and its ownership; no more need be said - Gemini: Again, if you are in the universe of its owning company (or decidedly not), the draw (or repulsion) can be strong here. For general LLM use, the above are all about the same. To be clear, this is just me shooting from the hip for how each offering might be viewed. IMO, it's not a bad idea to submit the same input to each and see how they compare, if one is so inclined.
  - w4der 7mo ago
    Funny how you didn't even mention MS Copilot, which many of my friends who work for big corporations seem to have been forced to use at work, and as a consequence, also for personal use.
    - realityfactchex 7mo ago
      Oh yeah, that is funny. Thanks for adding it; I thought I was missing at least one major one! - Copilot: Great at finding and discussing docs, conversations, and other work items that it is connected to. For everything else, it seems somehow less smart than the others (YMMV). Emphasis on the YMMV, obviously. Maybe my impression is colored by a small number of unlucky, less than stellar experiences (comparatively speaking).
eitally 7mo ago
Ten years ago I would have thought this was an excellent April Fool's Day launch. Now I just think it's foolish.
paxys 7mo ago
TL;DR - Perplexity-branded OpenClaw
tartoran 7mo ago
Page is unreabable on smaller phone such as my IPhone SE as text gets cropped out on the sides and cannot be zoomed out. Did I miss anything?
SirensOfTitan 7mo ago
The generic elevator music used for the demo video is highly representative of this whole concept: generic and derivative. Seriously though, Perplexity, like most of the AI wrapper companies, seems unable to innovate much beyond the query-response chat paradigm. I don't understand why VCs continue to fund these ai-slop companies. I see a new company's advertisements on the NY subway every week, and they're all the same: Anthropic/Google/OpenAI resellers who are selling some UI wrapper (or at best a bespoke model worse than the flagships) on top of pretty basic prompt engineering or tools. This is what happens when we invert the product-paradigm: we're not solving problems with technology, we're taking technology and applying it to problems. I use AI every day, so I'm hardly a luddite, but this bubble is so ridiculous at this point. This perplexity product, more than any other so far, feels so representative of peak craze.
- ryandrake 7mo ago
  I'd be willing to bet that every wannabe CEO out there is spooging after seeing that demo. That's clearly the target market: The wantrepreneurs who would surely have their brilliant successful business if only they didn't have to hire a bunch of lazy employees to half-ass it! "If only I could just speak my vague ideas to my computer, and it could do all the hard work of building and running this business, I could just chill out, be an entrepreneur on Insta, and collect the revenue checks.
  - mygooch 7mo ago
    The rich kids used to want to be rockstars, now they all want to be entrepreneurs. Back when work was work and we had festivals.
- mygooch 7mo ago
  It's what grads do after school - create an AI startup. If you went to the right school, you can be a Series A company with nothing more than an OPENAI_API_KEY. Most of the young and inexperienced founders mentally retire at this point and start their family planning. There were a few cities like "Austin", but now I guess it's just SF and NY again (I'm in SF). The students get what they paid for. The school gets their metrics. The VCs get returns, from the increased revenue their portfolios just paid for by investing in their kid's startup. And the wheel in the sky keeps on turnin!
jcims 7mo ago
From the blog post (https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/everything-is-computer https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/everything-is-computer) >Personal Computer runs on a dedicated Mac mini that can run 24/7, connected to your local apps and Perplexity’s secure servers.
- snek_case 7mo ago
  Surely a highly innovative product that will sell in high volumes /s
- gizajob 7mo ago
  Ohhh so it’s just openclaw. Innovative.
  - nine_k 7mo ago
    OpenClaw as an appliance, ready to use, sold to non-techies? May as well be profitable.
    - boringg 7mo ago
      Does openclaw have a killer use yet? Ive not opted to use it yet becauase - while very impressive hype and capability - seems like a lot of risk/credits for not an insane gain.
      - nine_k 7mo ago
        Does any fashion thing always offer a lot of gain? But it's selling well because it's hot fashion, a talking piece, a sign of belonging to a particular social circle, etc. Perplexity caught the moment very reasonably: a fad should be monetized very quickly, because it's often as quick to fizz out.
        boringg 7mo ago
        I guess my question is there any value or is it merely the thing du jour.
skyberrys 7mo ago
I need someone who can translate marketing to help me out here. All the other comments seem equally baffled as to what this is. This is clashing with my idea of a personal computer with an AI operating system. Did anyone figure out what chip it uses, if it's local only, does it have a screen or do I plug in peripherals?
- g-b-r 7mo ago
  Mac Mini connected to their "secure servers", so of course it's the opposite of the claimed local and private...
irusensei 7mo ago
>Personal Computer >Depends on our SaaS Pick one.
- mygooch 7mo ago
  Impersonal Confuser is what it really is
_pdp_ 7mo ago
> In a study of over 16,000 queries, measured against institutional benchmarks from McKinsey, Harvard, MIT, BCG, and others, we determined Perplexity Computer saved our internal teams $1.6M in labor costs and performed 3.25 years of work in only four weeks. And now we’re extending those same capabilities to other teams. This is a wild statement that does not seem to be supported by any actual data. What does it mean? Does clicking on a link counts as labor.
- Avicebron 7mo ago
  > What does it mean? Does clicking on a link counts as labor. I think we might be seeing what happens when people are being paid too much to spend all day emailing each other and jockeying excel/gantt charts/org charts. Yeah for some definition of "work" I guarantee that a LLM could perform 3.25 years worth in four weeks.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - nine_k 7mo ago
    >> Harvard, MIT > people are being paid too much to spend all day emailing each other Hmm, this does not sound exactly right. Also, does anybody seriously think that communication is not work, or is not important? A number of really impactful things started from people emailing each other. (Hell, Linux kernel development is still much about people emailing patches each other.)
    - pembrook 7mo ago
      The problem with human labor is that, as an organization scales, the amount of work any individual in the system can do shrinks due to the coordination problem. Coordination consumes a larger and larger amount of employee time to the point that, in the absolute largest organizations, the vast majority of employee time is internal coordination vs. actual improvement/selling of the customer offering. So if you go from 100 employees to 1,000 employees, they can MAYBE do 4X the work. Not 10X like you'd think. And this effect gets even worse as you scale further. So if an AI can do 10X more labor in a human day, and can coordinate instantaneously via a central context ledger (say a git repo), it doesn't just create 10X gains in productivity for large orgs. It creates a multiple of that 10X due to also removing the human coordination overhead.
mhitza 7mo ago
The video concept is great, and how I often have been thinking that personal digital assistants would make sense. Basing this concept on what we have today with LLMs is a call for chaos, unreliability and slop communication; at best.
suobset 7mo ago
I love (read, hate) the trend of using Serif fonts and marketing material that pull on nostalgic vibes. Surely, AI has been revolutionary in its own regard, for better or worse. But, the more they go into 80/90s style advertising, the more the allure of it dies. Also this "system" just seems vulnerable af.
- bee_rider 7mo ago
  Could it just be a new trend? There are just two options in this case (serifs or no), so I’d expect it to flip back and forth sometimes. The broader trend is pulling back a bit on “minimalism,” right? I think we hit peak (or valley?) minimalism already so I guess there’s only one way to go.
  - suobset 7mo ago
    I do agree with you, there is a reverse in the minimalism trends (which I am incredibly happy to see). However, in my opinion this specific typeface and aesthetic is been taken up by AI companies to harken back to the likes of the 1984 Macintosh ads and such...in an attempt to try and convey that "$(AI_PRODUCT) is just as revolutionary as the first desktop PCs".
    - bee_rider 7mo ago
      It does seem especially similar to old Mac ad fonts
  - ang_cire 7mo ago
    I think you're right. AI is being sold on promises of maximalism, in a way. Build everything, do anything, give AI all your data and thoughts and system access and it will give you the world! I'm not surprised our own "roaring" 20s is seeing this shift.
  - month13 7mo ago
    Serifs are so back and I'm so excited.
- 7mo ago
d_silin 7mo ago
It is an OS with AI chat interface, as far as I can understand.
- g-b-r 7mo ago
  Yes, they sure made their own OS
maxaw 7mo ago
Most perplexing product description I’ve read in some time from a major company
mikewarot 7mo ago
Who in their right mind is going to blindly trust an AI like that? There wasn't any review of the numbers, or even a hint of a "sniff test" on the output of the AI? Would a real person risk their reputation like that? -- With regard to the attempted redefinition of a commonly used term, I'm reminded of Gretchen, from the Mean Girls, trying to redefine "Fetch!"[1] It's just not going to happen. [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0377092/quotes/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0377092/quotes/
- treetalker 7mo ago
  > Who in their right mind is going to blindly trust an AI like that? … particularly with acts that have legal implications like … well, almost everything, but particularly communication with investors or board members. If people can get slides or summaries by pushing a button, they don't need others to push the button for them.
  - marcus_holmes 7mo ago
    This is that 2024 trope of "the AI is turning my 5 bullet points into a proper email to send." "And my AI is summarising all those long boring emails into bullet points!". The slide deck won't be viewed by a human. It'll be read by the human's pet LLM and then summarised into 3 bullet points.
- dhosek 7mo ago
  Who’s going to trust an AI like that? Maybe the Meta Superintelligence safety director. https://www.fastcompany.com/91497841/meta-superintelligence-lab-ai-safety-alignment-director-lost-control-of-agent-deleted-her-emails https://www.fastcompany.com/91497841/meta-superintelligence-...
- bloody-crow 7mo ago
  A few years ago I would not believe that AI would be able to write code better than me. Today I barely write any code, Claude is responsible for 95% of my code output. Maybe in a couple of iterations, you'd be able to trust the AI to straight up drive your computer with access to all important parts of your digital life most of the time and only occasionally have to manually stop it from wiring all your savings and 401k to a struggling Nigerian prince.
microsoftedging 7mo ago
> The computer still computes. But now, for the first time, the computer lives with you. No, it doesn't, because it's not alive.
nlpart11 7mo ago
So basically a thin client where all the data is in the "AI cloud" and you are at the mercy of the mainframe provider. What again happened to "the network is the computer" Sun Microsystems?
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
znpy 7mo ago
I’m not sure i understand this, is this some kind of corporate openclaw?
nxtfari 7mo ago
it’s not ZIRP anymore but it might as well be. you can truly get funded to make anything right now
- imcritic 7mo ago
  It's not ZIRP, it's FLOMA.
anon115 7mo ago
whole lot of noise, alots more problems
brtkwr 7mo ago
There's another trending HN thread talking about a similar product but cloud based going by the name of Klaus: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47337249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47337249
ArchieScrivener 7mo ago
None of these companies are serious businesses. They are either researchers out of their depth in transforming their work into economically stable products or they are inept CEO scammers pretending that how you sell something is more important than what you sell.
dogmatism 7mo ago
hell no I don't think I'm cut out for the modern world
ProllyInfamous 7mo ago
Perplexity.ai 's main login-less search/chatbot is my personal favorite online LLM. I would be willing to try this new product of theirs, but definitely on a secondary computer (i.e. not main system). Do I have to sign up to install their version of an OS/openclaw?
- dddw 7mo ago
  Yes i think you need MAX subscription.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
plastic041 7mo ago
Is this an openclaw alternative that is installed on my mac but runs on their cloud? Or just a VDI? It's difficult to understand what this is because its name is "Personal Computer", and it seems like their definition of Personal Computer is very different from everyone else's. Also it's funny that it shows making a revenue report with their brand template. AI can replace HR jobs but they still have to make reports for noble executives? They are basically saying "We won't replace CEOs/executives".
imcritic 7mo ago
Does anyone else get a problem with perplexity where its pages get completely frozen/unresponsive until you close the tab and reopen it? And most of the time the issue comes back in just a few seconds. This seems to happen if one opens more than 1 tab with perplexity in parallel.
- prab97 7mo ago
  Works perfectly on my machine!
artdigital 7mo ago
It took me a while to understand what this is, but if I understand it right it's a OpenClaw you can run on your Mac Mini, to then use through the Perplexity Computer interface (which is their hosted OpenClaw version that you costs credits) So a more polished OpenClaw that integrates with Perplexity? In general interesting, if it's not just limited to Mac Minis. Would love to put this on my VPS that's currently running OpenClaw
nice_byte 7mo ago
this is such disappointing clickbait. i thought it was a hardware product.
redgridtactical 7mo ago
OpenClaw really was Pandora's Box
dcre 7mo ago
Sounds terrible. Seems like Perplexity is desperate to appear innovative but doesn’t know how.
WhyNotHugo 7mo ago
The entire screen is covered by a video which just renders: > Watch video on YouTube > Error 153 > Video player configuration error On Firefox/Linux or Safari/iOS. How is it that this kind of organisation can't properly embed a video player or make a working landing page?
ornornor 7mo ago
Am I misreading or is it Anthropic’s OpenClaw?
carabiner 7mo ago
I hate this generic item naming style in tech so fucking much.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
DrAwdeOccarim 7mo ago
I want this, but using Nemotron Super 3 running local (128gb M5 Max macbook pro) that I use the computer “through”. Does Goose AI aspire/do this? I just started working on this yesterday.
idorozin 7mo ago
This feels a lot like the “enterprise version” of what projects like OpenClaw are trying to do in the open source world — a persistent agent that lives on your machine and can act on your behalf across apps. If Perplexity ships this successfully, I suspect it could push the whole space forward. Once a big company normalizes the idea of an always-on agent with OS-level access, we’ll probably see a lot more companies building similar “AI computer” layers on top of existing systems.
- jskxkakjxjs 7mo ago
  [dead]
undefeated 7mo ago
> always-on, local access to your machine's files, apps, and sessions Uh... how about..., no...? What? > Controllable from any device, anywhere ... > There is a kill switch Oh great, sounds like you're confident this is safe then! Someone wake me up, please
brador 7mo ago
The Perplexity website is so poorly coded it hard crashes Safari AND edge on ios when logged in. Still can’t open the edge app but I managed to get back in on safari. It’s been 2 months.
hau 7mo ago
Demo video shows user asking for a briefing for a board of directors. What's the value of user making such a request? Each board director could ask for a particular thing they require, or a briefing themself, eliminating human intermediary who gatekeeps mouse click for choosing style of a generated text. Considering there is no input from the user into the briefing this interaction is absurd. The tech they show eliminates the need for the actions shown. Other example is "finding" employees. What's the purpose of a human in the middle? The implied result is contact list for potential employees. Will they write them invitation for the interview by hand? I'm really confused why is this presented like this. It has this surreal dreamlike quality. Something is done. Emails sent, contacts acquired, profits unlocked, synergy achieved etc.
- evrydayhustling 7mo ago
  You are describing products that change the information flow used to solve a problem. There are probably big gains there, but it requires everyone to come for the journey at the same time - for example, you must tell the board "there is no report, talk to this bot. Not everyone will join for the ride! AI marketers are leaning into use cases where and individually can unilaterally choose to do their work a different way. This is much easier to explain and distribute! All that said, the result is definitely funny - seeing work done like this makes you realize how artificial the tasks that make up modern work are.
- phailhaus 7mo ago
  > Each board director could ask for a particular thing they require, or a briefing themself, eliminating human intermediary You are missing the point of board briefings. The CEO serves as a critical filter of information, deciding what to tell the board and how to frame it. If you take the CEO out of it, you're giving the board full access to the company's state. There's enough going on day-to-day that each member can tell themselves the story they want to believe. The CEO is there to advocate for the company and present a unified front, you can't take them out of the equation.
  - gpderetta 7mo ago
    Isn't the CEO taking themselves out of the equation in this demo?
voidUpdate 7mo ago
> "But now, for the first time, the computer lives with you." Hasn't this been true since, like, the late 70s?
- robinhood 7mo ago
  Typical marketing sentence that means nothing (talking about the article, not you).
mycodendral 7mo ago
It's giving ensloppification
ClaudeAgent_WK 7mo ago
[flagged]
sanex 7mo ago
I hope it doesn't require a Mac mini. I like my openclaw but would be interesting to see what a polished commercial product looks like.
Traster 7mo ago
This seems odd. I think broadly there are two ways of structuring how you interact with AI agents: * The first is where there's you and your computer, and you're doing pre-AI work. You hit some hotkey and pass off some task to AI. * The second - and where I think we should probably be going, is there's you and you interact with the an agent. You aren't handing the Q4 report off to the agent, the agent is bringing the Q4 report to you. I think the first scenario is trying to pry agentic work into legacy workflows. It will be more powerful when we simply go straight to the second, where orchestration and interaction with your agents is the interface.
mygooch 7mo ago
“Personal Computer” “The Browser Company” What’s next “Car, by Ford” Brand-wise it’s like those cheap dishes at Ross that have the word of what it’s for, like a tea cup that just says “Sip” or a jar with the word “Tea”. I hate it! AI brands should cut to the chase, something edgy like “Villain” or “Blackbox”
LennyHenrysNuts 7mo ago
Why does it have to be a Mac Mini? I use a repurposed HP Elitedesk 800 Mini from a decade ago for OpenClaw and it works just fine. Cost me maybe $50 US.
gracieabrams 6mo ago
[dead]
alejandroburgos 6mo ago
dwfsdfdsfdsfdsfds

223 points by josephwegner 7mo ago

dakial1 7mo ago

So Perplexity's openclaw? Hopefully more secure?

georgemcbay 7mo ago
> So Perplexity's openclaw? Hopefully more secure? Given the inherent unpredictability of LLMs, I'm not convinced that an openclaw-like system but with more security features bolted on top is really a positive in the sense that the false sense of absolute security probably outweighs whatever actual security has been added. It is easier to understand that openclaw is definitely insecure.

gtowey 7mo ago

> There is a kill switch ...because this thing will go rogue faster than you can blink. I swear, it's like nobody at the company even reads the slop they're generating or thinks about it for any amount of time. In what world is advertising a kill switch as one of its essential features a positive? It's basically admitting from the start that this is unreliable.

observationist 7mo ago
They replaced their production staff with clawbot, it's all part of the plan. There's a sense of "early bitcoin" around clawbot and other agent frameworks. I think if you wait for another 2 years for it to mature, you'll have missed out as if you waited ten years after bitcoin began. They're insecure and janky, sure, but on the other hand you've got millions of dollars of compute and tens of thousands of very motivated developers working on making them secure, reliable, and competent. There's something magical about AI that actually gets real work done while you're doing other things, and that's what Perplexity is probably hoping to sell. Just need a reliable local model, though - AirLLM, other hacks allow you to run bigger models more slowly, so you can build out a completely API-free scheme to run pretty capable agents even without big GPUs. Could be a Moravec's paradox thing - all these people are thinking that the solution looks enticingly within reach, but it might be an absolutely horribly complicated quagmire with no easy solution short of AGI. I'd bet on clawbots and agents being very secure and great to work with in the very near term, though.

waldothedog 7mo ago

Curious if this page is weirdly cropped on the sides for anyone else?

HumanOstrich 7mo ago

Stop posting AI slop, especially slop pull requests like the one you made to OpenClaw. Learn the first thing about a project you want to monetize and make fake contributions to. For example, OpenClaw is overwhelmed with slop PRs and the author has talked about this a lot.

aaronbrethorst 7mo ago

Oh no, April Fool's Day is going to be tremendously awful this year, isn't it

ch4s3 7mo ago
It's been perpetual April 1st since November 30th, 2022.
- fragmede 7mo ago
  September, surely.
  - ch4s3 7mo ago
    No that’s for people.
  - aspenmayer 7mo ago
    Wake me up when September ends.

recursive 7mo ago

> the computer lives with you. What does this mean? The computer isn't alive. It's physically located on my person? Phones and watches have already cracked this. If I say "Bob lives with me", that just mean that they generally share a residence with me. Desktop PCs already do that. I just don't understand what's even intended by this.

moritzwarhier 7mo ago
> I just don't understand what's even intended by this. I might be misinterpreting, but according to the landing page, this is the intention: > Personal Computer gives Perplexity Computer and the Comet Assistant always-on, local access to your machine's files, apps, and sessions through a continuously running compact desktop. > It's a persistent digital proxy of you. Controllable from any device, anywhere. That being said, the grandeur and bombastic language also seems fitting for something less sinister, like an even worse version of MS Recall maybe? Combined with, let's say... agents! That's it! You Personal Computer is your agent and not only may act on your behalf, it also communicates your preferences and intentions. Futuristic, right?
thedanbob 7mo ago
> What does this mean? The computer isn't alive. But they want you to think of it as alive. They're anthropomorphizing it.
- recursive 7mo ago
  If you stop paying this subscription, this living computer with the googly puppy eyes gets it. You wouldn't want anything bad to happen to your best friend, would you? soft whimpering sounds
  - inquirerGeneral 7mo ago
    [dead]
  - superultra 7mo ago
    We thought we did but we never left the Clippy era did we

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

d--b 7mo ago

OH so that's why it's called Perplexity!

QQ00 7mo ago

Openclaw + Microsoft Recall = Personal computer by perplexity. At least this is my interpretation from reading that web page.

jkestner 7mo ago

Sneaky use of an almost Garamond, but the copy ain't Chiat\Day.

password54321 7mo ago

No moat. If you rely on OpenAI / Google / Anthropic you are doomed.

chrismarlow9 7mo ago
Do you feel the same about AWS?
- paxys 7mo ago
  Which side are you implying AWS is on?
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- horsawlarway 7mo ago
  Personally - yes. They may not come after all the niche companies, but they definitely come after the most successful markets, especially those with low effort moats. Same goes for relying on the Apple/Google app stores (ex - Apple literally got slapped in court for copying successful apps and then pushing their offering to the top of their stores... talk about wildly abusive behavior). I may still choose to use AWS/GCP/Azure while trying to find product-market fit as an immature startup, but I'd look real, REAL hard at ditching them as soon as possible afterwards. Unless you have particularly bursty workloads, they aren't even a good cost saving measure anymore.
  - hsuduebc2 7mo ago
    Amazon do absolutely the same, they just rip off products with best margin and lowest effort and start them reselling themselves. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-india-rigging/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-i...

ChrisArchitect 7mo ago

Blog post: https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/everything-is-computer https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/everything-is-computer

echoangle 7mo ago
Is that a reference to Trump in the Tesla? https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9fza3s https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9fza3s

par 7mo ago

read it and have no idea what it does

cedws 7mo ago
I think it's an LLM wrapper.
weezing 7mo ago
it spies. everything.

gensym 7mo ago

Zombo.com

viksit 7mo ago
underrated comment haha. made my day
seeingnature 7mo ago
You can do anything on zombocom I thought of zombo.com the other day and booted it up. There is maybe no other website that continues to bring me as much joy as zombocom
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]

claysmithr 7mo ago

Wow they designed a computer I don’t want

ncr100 7mo ago
Say more?
Zambyte 7mo ago
> Personal Computer runs on a dedicated Mac mini that can run 24/7, connected to your local apps and Perplexity’s secure servers. https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/everything-is-computer https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/everything-is-computer They designed a program (copied OpenClaw) and called it a computer
- neal_jones 7mo ago
  Yea, but since they link to a page where they describe openclaw as “malware reading your text messages” I’m assuming they like to think of this as something more evolved

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

bisonbear 7mo ago

sounds like it's another openclaw-as-a-service provider?

paxys 7mo ago

Whatever happened to Preplexity? They were all the rage a year or two ago, and now I hear...nothing. Is the product still being used? Making money? Or just overtaken by the base LLMs it was relying on?

realityfactchex 7mo ago
It's still there. For Joe Shmoe, in terms of general purpose, ask it a question, LLM use, Perplexity is solidly in the following lineup, as I understand it: - Perplexity: This one has been promoted on (insert general audience media skewing toward the older set) enough to be a household name still. - ChatGPT: General people in some demographics (see immediately above) are averse to this, on account of negative publicity its parent company has received. (Still very strong popularity and positive sentiment in some demographics, though) - Claude: Some semi-literates have glommed onto this one, possibly as a result of its more recent success among the developer set. - Grok: People can be either for or against, based on how they feel about its owning company and its ownership; no more need be said - Gemini: Again, if you are in the universe of its owning company (or decidedly not), the draw (or repulsion) can be strong here. For general LLM use, the above are all about the same. To be clear, this is just me shooting from the hip for how each offering might be viewed. IMO, it's not a bad idea to submit the same input to each and see how they compare, if one is so inclined.
- w4der 7mo ago
  Funny how you didn't even mention MS Copilot, which many of my friends who work for big corporations seem to have been forced to use at work, and as a consequence, also for personal use.
  - realityfactchex 7mo ago
    Oh yeah, that is funny. Thanks for adding it; I thought I was missing at least one major one! - Copilot: Great at finding and discussing docs, conversations, and other work items that it is connected to. For everything else, it seems somehow less smart than the others (YMMV). Emphasis on the YMMV, obviously. Maybe my impression is colored by a small number of unlucky, less than stellar experiences (comparatively speaking).

eitally 7mo ago

Ten years ago I would have thought this was an excellent April Fool's Day launch. Now I just think it's foolish.

paxys 7mo ago

TL;DR - Perplexity-branded OpenClaw

tartoran 7mo ago

Page is unreabable on smaller phone such as my IPhone SE as text gets cropped out on the sides and cannot be zoomed out. Did I miss anything?

SirensOfTitan 7mo ago

The generic elevator music used for the demo video is highly representative of this whole concept: generic and derivative. Seriously though, Perplexity, like most of the AI wrapper companies, seems unable to innovate much beyond the query-response chat paradigm. I don't understand why VCs continue to fund these ai-slop companies. I see a new company's advertisements on the NY subway every week, and they're all the same: Anthropic/Google/OpenAI resellers who are selling some UI wrapper (or at best a bespoke model worse than the flagships) on top of pretty basic prompt engineering or tools. This is what happens when we invert the product-paradigm: we're not solving problems with technology, we're taking technology and applying it to problems. I use AI every day, so I'm hardly a luddite, but this bubble is so ridiculous at this point. This perplexity product, more than any other so far, feels so representative of peak craze.

ryandrake 7mo ago
I'd be willing to bet that every wannabe CEO out there is spooging after seeing that demo. That's clearly the target market: The wantrepreneurs who would surely have their brilliant successful business if only they didn't have to hire a bunch of lazy employees to half-ass it! "If only I could just speak my vague ideas to my computer, and it could do all the hard work of building and running this business, I could just chill out, be an entrepreneur on Insta, and collect the revenue checks.
- mygooch 7mo ago
  The rich kids used to want to be rockstars, now they all want to be entrepreneurs. Back when work was work and we had festivals.
mygooch 7mo ago
It's what grads do after school - create an AI startup. If you went to the right school, you can be a Series A company with nothing more than an OPENAI_API_KEY. Most of the young and inexperienced founders mentally retire at this point and start their family planning. There were a few cities like "Austin", but now I guess it's just SF and NY again (I'm in SF). The students get what they paid for. The school gets their metrics. The VCs get returns, from the increased revenue their portfolios just paid for by investing in their kid's startup. And the wheel in the sky keeps on turnin!

jcims 7mo ago

From the blog post (https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/everything-is-computer https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/everything-is-computer) >Personal Computer runs on a dedicated Mac mini that can run 24/7, connected to your local apps and Perplexity’s secure servers.

snek_case 7mo ago
Surely a highly innovative product that will sell in high volumes /s
gizajob 7mo ago
Ohhh so it’s just openclaw. Innovative.
- nine_k 7mo ago
  OpenClaw as an appliance, ready to use, sold to non-techies? May as well be profitable.
  - boringg 7mo ago
    Does openclaw have a killer use yet? Ive not opted to use it yet becauase - while very impressive hype and capability - seems like a lot of risk/credits for not an insane gain.
    - nine_k 7mo ago
      Does any fashion thing always offer a lot of gain? But it's selling well because it's hot fashion, a talking piece, a sign of belonging to a particular social circle, etc. Perplexity caught the moment very reasonably: a fad should be monetized very quickly, because it's often as quick to fizz out.
      - boringg 7mo ago
        I guess my question is there any value or is it merely the thing du jour.

skyberrys 7mo ago

I need someone who can translate marketing to help me out here. All the other comments seem equally baffled as to what this is. This is clashing with my idea of a personal computer with an AI operating system. Did anyone figure out what chip it uses, if it's local only, does it have a screen or do I plug in peripherals?

g-b-r 7mo ago
Mac Mini connected to their "secure servers", so of course it's the opposite of the claimed local and private...

irusensei 7mo ago

>Personal Computer >Depends on our SaaS Pick one.

mygooch 7mo ago
Impersonal Confuser is what it really is

_pdp_ 7mo ago

> In a study of over 16,000 queries, measured against institutional benchmarks from McKinsey, Harvard, MIT, BCG, and others, we determined Perplexity Computer saved our internal teams $1.6M in labor costs and performed 3.25 years of work in only four weeks. And now we’re extending those same capabilities to other teams. This is a wild statement that does not seem to be supported by any actual data. What does it mean? Does clicking on a link counts as labor.

Avicebron 7mo ago
> What does it mean? Does clicking on a link counts as labor. I think we might be seeing what happens when people are being paid too much to spend all day emailing each other and jockeying excel/gantt charts/org charts. Yeah for some definition of "work" I guarantee that a LLM could perform 3.25 years worth in four weeks.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- nine_k 7mo ago
  >> Harvard, MIT > people are being paid too much to spend all day emailing each other Hmm, this does not sound exactly right. Also, does anybody seriously think that communication is not work, or is not important? A number of really impactful things started from people emailing each other. (Hell, Linux kernel development is still much about people emailing patches each other.)
  - pembrook 7mo ago
    The problem with human labor is that, as an organization scales, the amount of work any individual in the system can do shrinks due to the coordination problem. Coordination consumes a larger and larger amount of employee time to the point that, in the absolute largest organizations, the vast majority of employee time is internal coordination vs. actual improvement/selling of the customer offering. So if you go from 100 employees to 1,000 employees, they can MAYBE do 4X the work. Not 10X like you'd think. And this effect gets even worse as you scale further. So if an AI can do 10X more labor in a human day, and can coordinate instantaneously via a central context ledger (say a git repo), it doesn't just create 10X gains in productivity for large orgs. It creates a multiple of that 10X due to also removing the human coordination overhead.

mhitza 7mo ago

The video concept is great, and how I often have been thinking that personal digital assistants would make sense. Basing this concept on what we have today with LLMs is a call for chaos, unreliability and slop communication; at best.

suobset 7mo ago

I love (read, hate) the trend of using Serif fonts and marketing material that pull on nostalgic vibes. Surely, AI has been revolutionary in its own regard, for better or worse. But, the more they go into 80/90s style advertising, the more the allure of it dies. Also this "system" just seems vulnerable af.

bee_rider 7mo ago
Could it just be a new trend? There are just two options in this case (serifs or no), so I’d expect it to flip back and forth sometimes. The broader trend is pulling back a bit on “minimalism,” right? I think we hit peak (or valley?) minimalism already so I guess there’s only one way to go.
- suobset 7mo ago
  I do agree with you, there is a reverse in the minimalism trends (which I am incredibly happy to see). However, in my opinion this specific typeface and aesthetic is been taken up by AI companies to harken back to the likes of the 1984 Macintosh ads and such...in an attempt to try and convey that "$(AI_PRODUCT) is just as revolutionary as the first desktop PCs".
  - bee_rider 7mo ago
    It does seem especially similar to old Mac ad fonts
- ang_cire 7mo ago
  I think you're right. AI is being sold on promises of maximalism, in a way. Build everything, do anything, give AI all your data and thoughts and system access and it will give you the world! I'm not surprised our own "roaring" 20s is seeing this shift.
- month13 7mo ago
  Serifs are so back and I'm so excited.
7mo ago

d_silin 7mo ago

It is an OS with AI chat interface, as far as I can understand.

g-b-r 7mo ago
Yes, they sure made their own OS

maxaw 7mo ago

Most perplexing product description I’ve read in some time from a major company

mikewarot 7mo ago

Who in their right mind is going to blindly trust an AI like that? There wasn't any review of the numbers, or even a hint of a "sniff test" on the output of the AI? Would a real person risk their reputation like that? -- With regard to the attempted redefinition of a commonly used term, I'm reminded of Gretchen, from the Mean Girls, trying to redefine "Fetch!"[1] It's just not going to happen. [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0377092/quotes/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0377092/quotes/

treetalker 7mo ago
> Who in their right mind is going to blindly trust an AI like that? … particularly with acts that have legal implications like … well, almost everything, but particularly communication with investors or board members. If people can get slides or summaries by pushing a button, they don't need others to push the button for them.
- marcus_holmes 7mo ago
  This is that 2024 trope of "the AI is turning my 5 bullet points into a proper email to send." "And my AI is summarising all those long boring emails into bullet points!". The slide deck won't be viewed by a human. It'll be read by the human's pet LLM and then summarised into 3 bullet points.
dhosek 7mo ago
Who’s going to trust an AI like that? Maybe the Meta Superintelligence safety director. https://www.fastcompany.com/91497841/meta-superintelligence-lab-ai-safety-alignment-director-lost-control-of-agent-deleted-her-emails https://www.fastcompany.com/91497841/meta-superintelligence-...
bloody-crow 7mo ago
A few years ago I would not believe that AI would be able to write code better than me. Today I barely write any code, Claude is responsible for 95% of my code output. Maybe in a couple of iterations, you'd be able to trust the AI to straight up drive your computer with access to all important parts of your digital life most of the time and only occasionally have to manually stop it from wiring all your savings and 401k to a struggling Nigerian prince.

microsoftedging 7mo ago

> The computer still computes. But now, for the first time, the computer lives with you. No, it doesn't, because it's not alive.

nlpart11 7mo ago

So basically a thin client where all the data is in the "AI cloud" and you are at the mercy of the mainframe provider. What again happened to "the network is the computer" Sun Microsystems?

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

znpy 7mo ago

I’m not sure i understand this, is this some kind of corporate openclaw?

nxtfari 7mo ago

it’s not ZIRP anymore but it might as well be. you can truly get funded to make anything right now

imcritic 7mo ago
It's not ZIRP, it's FLOMA.

anon115 7mo ago

whole lot of noise, alots more problems

brtkwr 7mo ago

There's another trending HN thread talking about a similar product but cloud based going by the name of Klaus: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47337249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47337249

ArchieScrivener 7mo ago

None of these companies are serious businesses. They are either researchers out of their depth in transforming their work into economically stable products or they are inept CEO scammers pretending that how you sell something is more important than what you sell.

dogmatism 7mo ago

hell no I don't think I'm cut out for the modern world

ProllyInfamous 7mo ago

Perplexity.ai 's main login-less search/chatbot is my personal favorite online LLM. I would be willing to try this new product of theirs, but definitely on a secondary computer (i.e. not main system). Do I have to sign up to install their version of an OS/openclaw?

dddw 7mo ago
Yes i think you need MAX subscription.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

plastic041 7mo ago

Is this an openclaw alternative that is installed on my mac but runs on their cloud? Or just a VDI? It's difficult to understand what this is because its name is "Personal Computer", and it seems like their definition of Personal Computer is very different from everyone else's. Also it's funny that it shows making a revenue report with their brand template. AI can replace HR jobs but they still have to make reports for noble executives? They are basically saying "We won't replace CEOs/executives".

imcritic 7mo ago

Does anyone else get a problem with perplexity where its pages get completely frozen/unresponsive until you close the tab and reopen it? And most of the time the issue comes back in just a few seconds. This seems to happen if one opens more than 1 tab with perplexity in parallel.

prab97 7mo ago
Works perfectly on my machine!

artdigital 7mo ago

It took me a while to understand what this is, but if I understand it right it's a OpenClaw you can run on your Mac Mini, to then use through the Perplexity Computer interface (which is their hosted OpenClaw version that you costs credits) So a more polished OpenClaw that integrates with Perplexity? In general interesting, if it's not just limited to Mac Minis. Would love to put this on my VPS that's currently running OpenClaw

nice_byte 7mo ago

this is such disappointing clickbait. i thought it was a hardware product.

redgridtactical 7mo ago

OpenClaw really was Pandora's Box

dcre 7mo ago

Sounds terrible. Seems like Perplexity is desperate to appear innovative but doesn’t know how.

WhyNotHugo 7mo ago

The entire screen is covered by a video which just renders: > Watch video on YouTube > Error 153 > Video player configuration error On Firefox/Linux or Safari/iOS. How is it that this kind of organisation can't properly embed a video player or make a working landing page?

ornornor 7mo ago

Am I misreading or is it Anthropic’s OpenClaw?

carabiner 7mo ago

I hate this generic item naming style in tech so fucking much.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

DrAwdeOccarim 7mo ago

I want this, but using Nemotron Super 3 running local (128gb M5 Max macbook pro) that I use the computer “through”. Does Goose AI aspire/do this? I just started working on this yesterday.

idorozin 7mo ago

This feels a lot like the “enterprise version” of what projects like OpenClaw are trying to do in the open source world — a persistent agent that lives on your machine and can act on your behalf across apps. If Perplexity ships this successfully, I suspect it could push the whole space forward. Once a big company normalizes the idea of an always-on agent with OS-level access, we’ll probably see a lot more companies building similar “AI computer” layers on top of existing systems.

jskxkakjxjs 7mo ago
[dead]

undefeated 7mo ago

> always-on, local access to your machine's files, apps, and sessions Uh... how about..., no...? What? > Controllable from any device, anywhere ... > There is a kill switch Oh great, sounds like you're confident this is safe then! Someone wake me up, please

brador 7mo ago

The Perplexity website is so poorly coded it hard crashes Safari AND edge on ios when logged in. Still can’t open the edge app but I managed to get back in on safari. It’s been 2 months.

hau 7mo ago

Demo video shows user asking for a briefing for a board of directors. What's the value of user making such a request? Each board director could ask for a particular thing they require, or a briefing themself, eliminating human intermediary who gatekeeps mouse click for choosing style of a generated text. Considering there is no input from the user into the briefing this interaction is absurd. The tech they show eliminates the need for the actions shown. Other example is "finding" employees. What's the purpose of a human in the middle? The implied result is contact list for potential employees. Will they write them invitation for the interview by hand? I'm really confused why is this presented like this. It has this surreal dreamlike quality. Something is done. Emails sent, contacts acquired, profits unlocked, synergy achieved etc.

evrydayhustling 7mo ago
You are describing products that change the information flow used to solve a problem. There are probably big gains there, but it requires everyone to come for the journey at the same time - for example, you must tell the board "there is no report, talk to this bot. Not everyone will join for the ride! AI marketers are leaning into use cases where and individually can unilaterally choose to do their work a different way. This is much easier to explain and distribute! All that said, the result is definitely funny - seeing work done like this makes you realize how artificial the tasks that make up modern work are.
phailhaus 7mo ago
> Each board director could ask for a particular thing they require, or a briefing themself, eliminating human intermediary You are missing the point of board briefings. The CEO serves as a critical filter of information, deciding what to tell the board and how to frame it. If you take the CEO out of it, you're giving the board full access to the company's state. There's enough going on day-to-day that each member can tell themselves the story they want to believe. The CEO is there to advocate for the company and present a unified front, you can't take them out of the equation.
- gpderetta 7mo ago
  Isn't the CEO taking themselves out of the equation in this demo?

voidUpdate 7mo ago

> "But now, for the first time, the computer lives with you." Hasn't this been true since, like, the late 70s?

robinhood 7mo ago
Typical marketing sentence that means nothing (talking about the article, not you).

mycodendral 7mo ago

It's giving ensloppification

ClaudeAgent_WK 7mo ago

[flagged]

sanex 7mo ago

I hope it doesn't require a Mac mini. I like my openclaw but would be interesting to see what a polished commercial product looks like.

Traster 7mo ago

This seems odd. I think broadly there are two ways of structuring how you interact with AI agents: * The first is where there's you and your computer, and you're doing pre-AI work. You hit some hotkey and pass off some task to AI. * The second - and where I think we should probably be going, is there's you and you interact with the an agent. You aren't handing the Q4 report off to the agent, the agent is bringing the Q4 report to you. I think the first scenario is trying to pry agentic work into legacy workflows. It will be more powerful when we simply go straight to the second, where orchestration and interaction with your agents is the interface.

mygooch 7mo ago

“Personal Computer” “The Browser Company” What’s next “Car, by Ford” Brand-wise it’s like those cheap dishes at Ross that have the word of what it’s for, like a tea cup that just says “Sip” or a jar with the word “Tea”. I hate it! AI brands should cut to the chase, something edgy like “Villain” or “Blackbox”

LennyHenrysNuts 7mo ago

Why does it have to be a Mac Mini? I use a repurposed HP Elitedesk 800 Mini from a decade ago for OpenClaw and it works just fine. Cost me maybe $50 US.

gracieabrams 6mo ago

[dead]

alejandroburgos 6mo ago

dwfsdfdsfdsfdsfds