Did he actually say that?

Because in the article, there's only a tweet of him saying that Perplexity is "on standby to help", of which "offering to replace striking staff with AI" seems a pretty strong mischaracterization.

Update: The headline (but not the URL) was just changed to "Perplexity CEO offers AI company’s services to replace striking NYT staff" (emphasis mine).

> ...to help ensure your essential coverage is available to all through the election.

That sounds liking replacing striking staff to me, at least for the duration of the election. What other services of value except LLMs to write articles does Perplexity have to offer to the New York Times?

> That sounds liking replacing striking staff to me

That's my read too, but they could also e.g. lend them some engineers, have them build an election dashboard for them etc.

The fact that that would still be crossing the picket line, how realistic any of that is, or how genuine the offer, are all great questions/observations, but "replace with AI" seems like a quite dishonest editorialization in any case.

If editorialization is ever appropriate, this feels to me like the right time. Substantively, Perplexity make LLM tools - that's all they advertise on their website and what they are known for. Maybe they do have some jack-of-all-trade engineers who could turn their hands to web development or something, but there are also no doubt cleaners working at Perplexity. They aren't offering the New York Times help with the toilets!

But the article writers at NYT aren’t on strike—-as they’re in a diff bargaining unit with a contract and no-strike clause.

The only way having AI write articles would help is if it freed up working staff to help out with tech stuff-—which they said they won’t do.

Thank you for pointing that out; I missed it myself. That would imply that Perplexity's offer probably isn't even helpful in this situation, and it rather proves lxgr's point about TechCrunch's editorialization! It seems that the original journalist has made a correction:

> Though TechCrunch asked Perplexity for comment, Srinivas responded to TechCrunch’s post on X saying that “the offer was not to ‘replace’ journalists or engineers with AI but to provide technical infra support on a high-traffic day.” The striking workers in question, however, are the ones who provide that service to the NYT. It’s not really clear what services other than AI tools Perplexity could offer, or why they would not amount to replacing the workers in question. (However, in response to the clarification, we have opted to change the headline to reflect the claim that this offer was not necessarily specific to AI services.)

I've found llm generated code to work amazingly well for visualisation since you can just look and check you're getting the right results.

I don't think it's necessarily either-or. If he had the time to personally write the tweet, I think he would be willing to lend some engineers to help get them set up with their services.

The full quote is

> Hey AG Sulzberger @nytimes sorry to see this. Perplexity is on standby to help ensure your essential coverage is available to all through the election. DM me anytime here.”

it's absolutely scab behavior

Sure, but why add "with AI"?

"Because if a "machine/AI" does the work, it's not scabbing!" - executives, lying through their teeth.

They're using AI as smokescreen for anti-labor practices, as all AI tech executives are.

> "Because if a "machine/AI" does the work, it's not scabbing!"

Who is claiming that in this thread, the linked Techcrunch article, or the tweet quoted in that article?

And even if the Perplexity CEO in particular, or AI tech executives generally were to make that claim elsewhere: Misquoting somebody to strengthen a point like that immediately and significantly reduces my trust in a source.

Also, I'd say that the fact that Techcrunch just changed the headline speaks for itself.

Oh, mine wasn't intended to be a literal quote from anyone, hence why I said `- executives, lying through their teeth.` and didn't name anyone specific.

But this notion is definitely rolling around in the heads of these people, even if they won't say so because it's bad optics. What a CEO/executive says and what they believe and what they do are three very different things. You often cannot trust their weasel words.

But as for "the PerplexityAI CEO didn't say "with AI" in those words!!!"... how else exactly would an AI company help out with striking workers without their product of AI? That is an obvious subtext unsaid.

What non-AI solutions does Perplexity have to provide to NYT?

why add "with AI" to the company named "Perplexity AI"?

This is pretty much implied here. Perplexity is an AI-focused company. They're trying to make money off of a shitty situation. AI is a "cheap" tool to use for this purpose. It's really, really scummy.

Crossing the picket line like this is craven and opportunistic.

Pretty opportunistic to strike right before what is likely one of the highest traffic days for the NYT all year too

That's also known as playing your cards effectively

Yes, workers will take advantage of opportunities for their strike action to be more effective, good point.

I'm not disagreeing with that assertion at all: He's clearly offering them something to sabotage the strike.

I'm just pointing out that "offering to help" does equal "offering to help with AI". Sure, it's somewhat heavily implied by context, but journalistic integrity means making it clear what's an implication and what somebody actually said.

TechCrunch even seems to agree: They changed the headline retroactively.

I think the NYT should take him up on that offer. Those striking can probably pull off a 404media business model instead while they watch NYT turn into USA Today, except worse.

But they write software for NYTimes, they don't write journalism.

Additionally NYTimes benefits from huge networks effects – both in that they are a comprehensive source of (reasonably) reliable journalism which attracts lots of readers but also that they know lots of sources. It also helps that it's one of the better newspapers around (probably second to the FT).

FYI (and to those concerned) I ended up changing the headline after Aravind clarified. Since they are an AI company offering AI-powered election-day tracking that would presumably have replaced what the striking folks supported, I think it was well justified at the outset, but now that he's backtracked would be misleading to leave it. Still not great!

Heh, TC changed the URL and removed the 'with AI' from the title midday....

(comment below from author https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42046177)