Dear talking heads, painful pundits, prattling prognosticators, and over-hypers:  

You can put your pixelized pencils down now.

That’s because for the first time in forever—or at least the year and change since ChatGPT-3 hit the buzzworks, there’s actually something in AI-land that doesn’t come with a wisp of vapor, a hint of future-forward bait, and the distinct odor of fish.

It’s called Perplexity A.I., although I think it could be more properly tagged as CliffsNotes on digital steroids.  

In practice, it seems to be something of an information aggregator, leveraging the web, other AIs (including LLMs), and its own tech to provide nifty topical search summaries in the figurative blink of an eye.

Ga’ bless us one and all, but it’s real in the right now, not in the by-and-bye.

Of course, this being the season of silly, the technorati are all eyes on whether this is a Google-killer. In strategic terms, the question is whether it’s a product “improvement” or a true innovation.

My take: it’s going one better, not ripping up the blueprints and building new frankentech. Although the ex-Googler behind Perplexity might say he’s got his eye on disrupting Alphabet’s near-monopoly, my sense is that will require a much bigger shift—including some behavior change from thee and me.

Hard to argue that the corpulent dose of sponsored listings at the top of every Google page is discouraging eye pollution. But, still, a lot of us are going to want to be able to go deeper into the results than we get in even the most fluidly written summary.

To me, search isn’t just a list; it’s stimulus, allowing us to scan different inputs and, on occasion, leap to an interesting new conclusion. Something that won’t happen if everything comes so neatly packaged with a crafty ribbon bow tie on the top.

And neat time- and labor-saving packaging is what Perplexity is all about.

Which, by the way, is a compliment, not a rip.  

Am I Perplexed? You bet. And, for the first time in the AI era, in a good way. 

If you want to give it a try https://www.perplexity.ai