🔍 Who and How Created Perplexity, an AI Search Engine?
An interview with Aravind Srinivas, the founder of Perplexity AI, has been published. The company's objective is to build the world's smartest search engine. We previously covered the startup that challenged Google here. If you haven't tried it yet, we strongly recommend it.
Insights from the interview
⚪The world's smartest individuals are not necessarily those who have all the answers <...>. They're the smartest because they know which questions to ask.
⚪When I moved to Berkeley, a friend recommended that I watch the TV show "Silicon Valley". It's hilarious and realistic. Some episodes of the show actually happened in my life. The show motivated me to launch a startup.
⚪The world of Silicon Valley is the complete opposite of the rest of the world. Here, investors respond to cold emails.
⚪Young people's energy is contagious, especially in small teams with little to lose. It inspires you to launch your startup.
⚪The best ideas are the ones people will say to you, "Who will even work on this?"
A brief biography of Aravind
2017: Moved to the USA from Chennai, an Indian metropolis of geeks, where he graduated from the local equivalent of MIT;
2021: Received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley;
2018 to 2019 and 2021: Interned and worked as a researcher at OpenAI, DeepMind, and Google;
August 2022: Co-founded Perplexity with Google researcher Denis Yarats and world champion at competitive programming Johnny Ho.
What inspired Aravind to launch Perplexity?
📕 Books. During his internship at DeepMind, he worked all day in the office and spent nights reading books in its wonderful library. Two books had a significant impact on him: "How Google Works" by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg and "In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives" by Steven Levy.
👍 Personality: the story of Larry Page, one of Google's founders.
🖥 Event. The launch of GitHub Copilot, an AI tool that assists engineers in writing code.
How did Perplexity gain popularity?
🐤 Viral effect. Initially, the search engine operated with Twitter data; you could "perplex" a username to obtain an activity analysis. Users began sharing screenshots, and Jack Dorsey, Twitter's founder, tweeted about the new startup.
How does Perplexity work, and what distinguishes it from similar services?
Perplexity examines search results for your inquiry and returns a direct and accurate answer complete with quotes and links to sources of knowledge. Perplexity's search engine is based on the Claude 3, GPT-4, and Mistral Large models.
🤖 Unlike ChatGPT, Perplexity includes links to relevant information sources.
🔍 Unlike Google, Perplexity directly answers your question without requiring you to follow any links.
Sources
🕊 Aravind's account on X, where he actively shares news.
📹 Interview with Aravind by Marina Mogilko.
#Perplexity @hiaimediaen
