by Andy Meek at BGR
The AI-powered search engine Perplexity has come a long way since it launched back in 2022, so much so that it’s now reportedly close to a $3 billion valuation. The company, which is taking advantage of growing user dissatisfaction with Google Search, was founded, coincidentally, a few months before the launch of OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT — another Google rival, the launch of which reportedly sent Google into an all-hands-on-deck crisis mode.
Around the time of his company’s launch, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas turned at one point to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman for advice. Both CEOs are keenly focused on positioning their companies at the vanguard of the AI boom, so a conversation certainly made sense. Srinivas wanted Altman’s insights, specifically, into how he could go about identifying his core strengths — the things he’s good at. And Altman, it turns out, had a straightforward piece of wisdom for him:
‘Look for the things that come easy to you, but that are hard to other people.’
That might sound like generic fodder worthy of a fortune cookie — but, in hindsight, it was a critical bit of guidance that both men have taken to heart. Because two years on from the launch of both Perplexity and ChatGPT, it appears that the thing these two AI leaders have decided they’re good at is … repurposing the fruit of other people’s labor.
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