event at MIT that brought together more than 2,000 people interested in the future of AI, with few in the bustling crowd attracting more interest than“The whole AI is basically running on exponential time,” he said, awkwardly standing on the stage for this panel, until he was instructed to sit. “The regular time feels logarithmic relative to AI.
In case you’ve missed the brouhaha, here’s a quick summary: For most of this year, two of our best journalists,detailing the company’s ongoing testing in Silicon Valley suburb Menlo Park as well as the frontlines of Ukraine.
Referral traffic, which just means to the traffic that comes from links within stories, comprises maybe 3% of our total audience. It doesn’t cover, among other things, social media, aggregators or search. Factor all of that in, and Perplexity rates as our 54th biggest referral traffic source in terms of users — or 0.014%. Not exactly the savior of journalism Srinivas tried to position himself as — though maybe Forbes is saving him.
Why is all this important? It’s the perfect case study for this critical moment. AI is only as good as the people overseeing it. I’m an AI bull, and in the right hands, productivity and advances and prosperity await. But in the hands of the likes of Srinivas — who has the reputation as being great at the PhD tech stuff and less-than-great at the basic human stuff — amorality poses existential risk.
So what can be done? A few people can make a difference. For instance, the $174 million that Perplexity has raised so far includes a check from Jeff Bezos, who himself has made a huge investment in the need for journalism through.