Well, at least one CEO is being honest about the owning class's end goal with AI: a new source of cheap labor, but this time without entities that can negotiate.
I like Perplexity as a product. I’ve used the product a bit and was always impressed that it seemed pretty balanced.
Why would the leadership of a fairly popular, generally well-liked company with a generally useful, generally well-liked product take a pretty strident stance at the maximally high-temperature moment: fuck labor as a bloc, we’ll cross the strike lines?
Don’t technology companies want to avoid this kind of political shit and just build and ship?
It's only a matter of time until one of these jackasses creates a ChatGPT wrapper called scab.ai and markets it for this exact use case.
Quite recently, lots of people were calling on almost-striking longshoremen to be replaced by machines.
How is replacing tech workers with AI any different?
dupe from techcrunch: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42044956
I was able to get Perplexity to hallucinate very easily. Once it even cited the article where I got the prompt idea (I forget the URL, it was about teddy bears in space and published by the Signpost.) That was a while ago and I assume their model has improved, but hallucinations are still much more of a risk with AI than humans.
Also, how can Perplexity do things like interviews, tours, and other things that still require large amounts of human interaction?
[dupe] (because TechCrunch changed the url midday)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42044956
More discussion on main thread:
New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike
This guy should have consulted an LLM before he opened his mouth …
Isn't the tech union the one striking? So what is he implying -- that perplexity would automate the software development of the NYT needle or something?
Bold move. If I were the Union I would call perplexity's bluff and increase my ask.
Didn't this article have thirty comments an hour ago?
“ The NYT and Perplexity aren’t exactly on the best of terms right now. The Times sent Perplexity a cease and desist letter in October over the startup’s scraping of articles for use by its AI models.”
Just trying to smooth things over now… in the most supervillain way possible.
NYT is going to respond with a lawsuit
Roboscabs!
So much work to avoid being upset at this guy: "But to offer its services explicitly as a replacement for striking workers was bound to be an unpopular move."
No, really? You'd think these AI guys would have better PR departments.
scumbag move tbh
Scumbag? Based? Not sure what to say on this.
If NYT loses, we all win.
Honestly, the fact that he posted it the way he did, publicly in a tweet suggests he wasn’t trying to undermine workers but rather wanted to be seen as supporting election coverage. Based on his past interviews, he seems quite autistic in ways.
But really I think this could have been a good opportunity to strike some licensing deal in exchange for technology, had he been a bit more discreet
I find it a bit odd that Perplexity still have a human CEO.