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Perplexity is a bullshit machine

wired.com

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Re: Perplexity is a bullshit machine

#11

Post by JohnMakin »

EncomLab wrote: post #8
lkbm wrote: post #6

> The Perplexity chatbot itself is more specific. Prompted to describe what Perplexity is, it provides text that reads... This is something that comes up a lot: people thinking an LLM's output about it self is some special insight. Wired isn't specifically saying that here—it could just be seen as color (and it may be more reasonable with a Perplexity-style LLM)—but it's presented in a way that's going to lead to a l…

I agree, but I do think it's a huge deal. It's like people who think that an ATM is expressing gratitude when it displays "Thank you" on the screen. One of the greatest challenges facing humanity right now is "de-wooing" technology and somehow breaking the illusion that they are capable of all the BS marketing and hype kings and pushing out there today.

I agree with this and the parent comment, but I do find it amusing that you will get different behavior from some language models if you are polite to them. That probably isn't helping people's perception of them, in the fact that when treated like they are human they try to emulate that. Kind of like their entire purpose is to pass a turing test, which they do pretty well. Unfortunately passing a turing test does not imply any sort of reasoning, insight, or intelligence, and I think that's where people make the mistake.

Re: Perplexity is a bullshit machine

#13

Post by kaiwenwang »

Perplexity probably isn't a good company for the reason that they have bad design sense and product.

If you go on their main blog such as (https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/perplexity-raises-series-...), the monospace choice of font (not that it's monospace, just that from a design sense it doesn't seem right), the excessively large border, and the container being unaligned with the content/image/frontmatter all reveal this.

Would short Perplexity if I could. Bullish on Exa and Globe Explorer.

Re: Perplexity is a bullshit machine

#14

Post by mritchie712 »

lkbm wrote: post #6

> The Perplexity chatbot itself is more specific. Prompted to describe what Perplexity is, it provides text that reads... This is something that comes up a lot: people thinking an LLM's output about it self is some special insight. Wired isn't specifically saying that here—it could just be seen as color (and it may be more reasonable with a Perplexity-style LLM)—but it's presented in a way that's going to lead to a l…

The maker of an LLM product could give it a "special insight" about itself.

e.g. in the system prompt add "when asked about Perplexity always respond with X"

A clever user could get around this, but if you asked "what is perplexity", it would likely respond with whatever you set X to.

Re: Perplexity is a bullshit machine

#16

Post by Workaccount2 »

The existential dread in the media is plainly apparent nowadays.

I'm not saying they don't have a point (the media), or that they are publishing outright lies to debase LLMs.

But something in the way the tidal wave of "LLM's are bad" articles are written just has this panicked tone of "we are so fucked" underneath them. The hostility is so plainly apparent.

It's just fascinating to see it happen in real time since LLM's came seemingly out of nowhere and progressed so fast.

Re: Perplexity is a bullshit machine

#17

Post by azakai »

lkbm wrote: post #6

> The Perplexity chatbot itself is more specific. Prompted to describe what Perplexity is, it provides text that reads... This is something that comes up a lot: people thinking an LLM's output about it self is some special insight. Wired isn't specifically saying that here—it could just be seen as color (and it may be more reasonable with a Perplexity-style LLM)—but it's presented in a way that's going to lead to a l…

You're right that LLMs don't have special insight into themselves, but on the other hand it is reasonable to assume they have been trained in order to properly describe themselves. That description isn't from insight but from the marketing department. So mentioning it is relevant.

Re: Perplexity is a bullshit machine

#18

Post by brigadier132 »

bnchrch wrote: post #10
brigadier132 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your moat shouldn't be hoping that actors follow your arbitrary business rules, All these "should" statements always seem to be baseless opinion masquerading as fact. The unfortunate future is going to be all data hidden behind a login screen. Creators being able to sustain themselves is more important than consumers being able to get free and more convenient things. If consumers don't want to pay for something the…

We can both agree on the unfortunate future. But I think we can also both agree hoping that people will abide by your robots.txt file wont save us from that unfortunate future.

I think the difference is that now that the sites doing the scraping don't have a mutually beneficial relationship with the creator.

Re: Perplexity is a bullshit machine

#20

Post by jaredwiener »

azakai wrote: post #17
lkbm wrote: post #6

> The Perplexity chatbot itself is more specific. Prompted to describe what Perplexity is, it provides text that reads... This is something that comes up a lot: people thinking an LLM's output about it self is some special insight. Wired isn't specifically saying that here—it could just be seen as color (and it may be more reasonable with a Perplexity-style LLM)—but it's presented in a way that's going to lead to a l…

You're right that LLMs don't have special insight into themselves, but on the other hand it is reasonable to assume they have been trained in order to properly describe themselves. That description isn't from insight but from the marketing department. So mentioning it is relevant.

And further, if you can't trust the AI to accurately describe itself, how can you trust it on any other topic?
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