Every argument clarity score on this site is built from rows on this page. Each
question and answer was assessed with names hidden, the host's own answers included, on
four things from 1 to 5:
directness (does it answer the question asked), coherence (do the ideas follow),
precision (concrete details and clear references), compression (says a lot per word). The weighted
mix (30/30/25/15) is the exchange score. A person's published score averages their exchange
scores on raw tape only, at least 8 of them, shrunk toward the cohort mean.
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Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q because they have gone from this company that everybody like hailed as like the, you know, the beacon of innovation, 20% time. Uh, which was I think before your time, but to one that really can't get its act together shipping. Is it, is it that they don't have the right talent? Is it the process there? Um, is it leadership? What would you say is going on within Google?
A I certainly don't think it's because of talent. Um, I mean, you have to be insane to think you have more talented people than Google. I don't even think OpenAI has that, even though, like, they have a massive concentration of talent density today. Um, I think it's more to do with the bureaucracy, uh, and the culture. And, uh, leadership. These are the three main reasons why they're not able to do it. But in our case, um, the argument goes even further, which is probably the fourth thing and the most important thing is even if they wanted to do a product like perplexity and roll it out on google.com, that domain, the ultimate domain of the internet, they cannot do it that fast. They cannot do it even slowly. It's very hard because, uh, The bedrock of their business model is sending traffic to other people, uh, sending, like, link clicks, link views, so that's why there's two terms in their business model called cost per thousand views, CPM, and cost per click, CPC, and as an advertiser, you're bidding on certain keywords based on the CPM and the CPC, and there's an auction model, and like, It arbitrarily drives up, and Google Analytics gives you, like, which keywords are getting a high CPC and CPM, and the number of views and things like that. So it's basically, that is their business model. Like, the, the, the, the TenBlueLinks user interface. That's literally where they've bui…
AI assessment note: “I certainly don't think it's because of talent... more to do with the bureaucracy”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q down, uh, the pike this year, just like the way that they're talking is that it sounds like some serious advances are going to happen this year. Do you have any sense as to what those might be? And I don't understand like what, what could, What could inspire such talk? Is it much? I mean, if it's a slightly better GPT model, okay, but it sounds like something more.
A I mean, I don't know what, what has been said publicly. Maybe you, you hear something more privately, but, uh, I guess I'll just go by what Sam Altman told Bill Gates, and I was listening to it like two days ago, which is, um, they'll have a lot more reliable models. So Uh, right now, sometimes, one in a 10, or one in a hundred completions of a GPT-IV model, uh, is hallucinatory, can, can say arbitrary things. It's not reliable, it's not deterministic programs, so I think they'll address that. Uh, they'll also address the fact of the models being, like, more multimodal. Like, right now it supports images and input, but the most general version will support audio, video, as inputs and also as outputs. Well, uh, interface with text. I think they'll make some advances there. I think the third thing they'll make some advancements on is, um, reasoning. Uh, whatever reasoning GPT-IV is able to exhibit today is already amazing, but it's still pretty limited, and I think they'll make some more progress there in terms of multi-step reasoning and, like, doing back and forth thinking. You want models to be able to, like, think for a while and then come back and give you some things, right? So they, they probably make more progress on those things, and I guess the fourth thing that, um, Altman mentioned was, like, just, like, Reducing the costs. Oh, sorry. Increasing the personalization of…
AI assessment note: “I'll just go by what Sam Altman told Bill Gates... they'll have a lot more reliable models”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.85
Q With anthropic, um, what do you, what do you think about the, uh, the Claude model and does it hold a candle to GPTs?
A So far not to be very honest, but I'll tell you one thing. They, there are people in the world who actually like Claude a lot more than GPT in terms of response styles and eloquence. They like Claude a lot more. It's more natural. It feels more like talking to a human than to an AI, if you talk to Claude. So there are, we have, we offer Claude as an option on the perplexity product for pro users. And I know a lot of people who still use Claude instead of GPT-IV, even though GPT-IV is a more capable reasoner, because they like the way Claude responds. So Anthropic certainly has something. Now, Can they create a model better than GPT-IV? I definitely think they can, and if they don't, they're kind of doomed, in fact. This year, in 2024, if they don't create a model better than GPT-IV, all the funding and the, like, you know, the race is not being put to good use. But I actually think they will end up creating a model better than GPT-IV this year. Like, it, it, it's sort of almost guaranteed to happen. So I believe it's going to happen with CLAW-III. Now, Does that mean OpenAI is in trouble? I don't think so either. I'm sure there's a GPT 4.5 or five that will stay ahead. So it really is going to be a cat and mouse game there where Anthropics playing catch up and OpenAI is ahead through multimodal capabilities, reasoning capabilities, and things, things like that. Now the question…
AI assessment note: “So far not to be very honest, but I'll tell you one thing.”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q What is the problem with search today that you're trying to solve? Because it's one thing to say, hey, we have this cool technology, let's just apply it in like a logical way. But you have to see a glaring issue with this multi trillion dollar business of search to be like, okay, we're actually gonna do something different.
A Right. So the fundamental problem with search today is that you waste a lot of time, right? Like you're looking for something, you get a bunch of links. Uh, these links are sort of not exactly ordered in the way that should save your time, but order in the way that makes Google more money. Uh, you're getting the answer that, uh, 10 salespeople are trying to give you at the same time. Not the answer that a friend of yours who has used all these different services or products comes and tells you in a nice summarized way of like what is good or bad. Let's say you're like going and asking a friend of yours like which car you should buy. They're not going to tell you what's the best thing about each, uh, you know, car or like each of these cars are trying to bid for against one another to get your attention. What they're going to tell you is like, hey, look, I use all these things. I use all the other, I use two or three cars, and this is the best thing about this. This is the best thing about that. And what do you want? Like, what is it that you're interested in? There'll be a back and forth interaction with you. Uh, oh, like I actually like mileage more, or like I'm looking for electric car because I care about the environment. Like there are that sort of an interaction, that sort of personalization doesn't happen today in search, right? Um, and there is no incentive for Google to…
AI assessment note: “the fundamental problem with search today is that you waste a lot of time”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q searches you have, and that's there. I'm curious from your perspective, how do you think news and information creators are going to factor into this world? They're already, the Times is already suing OpenAI. Um, I, I go back and forth because I run a content business about whether I should let these bots crawl or not. Talk a little bit about what you think there and who actually benefits.
A So our thinking here has been to rely on our background as academics. First of all, like when we launched and Chad GPD launched one fundamental differences. We give people, uh, information on where the answer is coming from the source right at the top, which I love right at the top, the sources, the citations, right? And, uh, that I believe is a way to attribute the creator of the content. Okay. You know what? I'm not stealing your content. I'm actually. Attributing it to you. I'm telling the user exactly where it's coming from. And I'm going to drive traffic to you if they actually want to learn more about other stuff on that website. So in academia, this is a similar concept as writing a citation. And if someone's interested, they go and read the cited paper actually on their own. They, you know, we don't, we don't have to like tell them to go read it. They read it on their own because they think it's important. And, um, I think that's very, uh, fair use of other people's content. We're not stealing it. We're actually, like, just being a middleman between them and the end reader, and we're giving them more visibility, right? So it's a different kind of visibility. Until now, the internet economy has been built around, like, how much traffic am I getting? Now you're going to be like, how much awareness am I getting? How much awareness am I getting? Like how many times has some…
AI assessment note: “that I believe is a way to attribute the creator of the content”
Partly raw tape
D 3 · C 4 · P 3 · Cm 3 3.30
Q 11th biggest advertising business on the globe period outside of China. Uh, according to Brian Weiser from Madison and wall. So people end up spending, what did we say? Like 30 something minutes, 21 minutes and 58 seconds on perplexity and not just, you know, zinging out to websites through Google. How are you going to make money on that? And how does that change the economics of the internet?
A I think that we just need to rethink what advertising means, right? Uh, you go to the first principle of what advertising means. Advertising is a way for the creator of the content or the brand owner to maximize their awareness to the end user or, or, or viewership. Now, uh, TenBlueLinks is one way to connect the reader and the creator, but not the most efficient way. Right. The more efficient way is actually answering parts of what exists on your website to the end user directly. What exactly do you want the, uh, the user to know about you, which you're putting on your site anyway. You don't have to tell us, you don't have to like pay us for that. In fact, I, I believe it's fair. It's more fair to the advertiser. To like not be the middle guy telling and I'll figure out how to sort the order. You, you pay me money for that, but rather you, you write about yourself in the most honest, transparent way that you want the end user to know about you and let the AI do the job of taking that and reaching the end user more. More efficiently than before.
AI assessment note: “I think that we just need to rethink what advertising means”
