Perplexity 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.
Sam 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…
He 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.
Yeah, 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.
I 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).
