Hacker News Reader

Comment by nextworddev | Hacker News Reader

I have turned bearish on Perplexity recently, this confirms it

Perplexity is a really terrible name for a product and that alone will hold it back from being a real competitor.

It's not like ChatGPT (or ChatGTP as half of people call it) is much better.

It became a good name once it became a watershed viral phenomenon. Everything being equal yeah not a great name but it defined a new hype cycle so it got a pass

ChatGTP and other variants with a Levenshtein distance of 1 from ChatGPT have been typosquatted to death by subscriptionware wrappers on the App Store and the Play Store. Many of them seem to be quite successful.

ChatGPT isn't a great name, but it's easy to say, spell, and remember. And at this point, a lot of people just know them as OpenAI, which is a great name.

Perplexity sounds like a parody startup name from the Silicon Valley TV show. Way too complicated and unnatural.

You’re saying that now, but getting the initials in “ChatGPT” in the right order took a while to learn, so I wouldn’t say it’s easy to remember, and it seems easy to stumble saying it, too?

It’s all about familiarity. Once people learn it, it’s not hard.

But it didn't matter if they were in order or not, because ChatPTG or ChatTGP all go to the same place via Google, etc. It could have been called Chat + [Any 3 characters] and been fine.

Perplexity is just a nonsensical word (for those unfamiliar with the concept) that is too long and hard to spell. They'd be better off just chopping it down to Lexity, or Lex, or Plexity, or Plex, etc.

Isn’t perplexity a normal English word? Does an average American not know what perplexity in the usual sense is? The word has a meaning outside of AI, too. Or would they only recognize „perplexed“?

The average person definitely doesn’t know what perplexity means, and even perplexed is itself a bit of an advanced vocabulary word.

It's not a nonsensical word. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perplexity

That is why I wrote:

(for those unfamiliar with the concept)

in French it translates to ChatFart when you read it out loud.

A good language model is one with low perplexity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perplexity

Reasonable name for a language model startup.

Would False Positive be a good name for a medical screening service?

It would be a logical name if its customers were technicians familiar with LLMs, and not end businesses and consumers. Which is why Ford wasn't named Internal Combustion Engine, Apple wasn't named Graphics Processing Unit, etc.

Generative Pretrained Transformer is also a terrible brand name but it doesn’t seem to matter.

Because the name isn't Generative Pretrained Transformer, it's GPT.

Perplexity sounds no weirder to me for a tech product than than Google or Yahoo or Apple.

Those are all short and easy to say. Very obvious difference between them and a long complicated word like Perplexity.

Agreed, it's as if someone completely ignored the meaning of the word and just decided what sounds good for an AI app.

Same with 'Claude 3.5 Sonnet'.

At first I thought it was some piano piece like "Mazurkas, Op. 59" by Chopin, or had something to do with some French guy in the AI field.

I've always thought that the name is very ironic and perhaps "certitude" would've been a better name.

Perplexity was a cult in the first place.

I’m surprised at all the negativity on perplexity. I think it’s a great approach (base answers on sources) and their product seems to deliver on the premise.

That said, anecdotally, I find it’s a bit hit-miss: if it’s hit it’s a huge improvement over google (and a minor improvement over chatgpt), if it’s miss it’s still good but get the feeling you won’t get anywhere further by asking more questions.

I have been using Perplexity with the AI engine set to Claude 3.5 Sonnet for a month now, mostly for programming related questions, and it has been amazing. I mostly stopped using google.

I do the same but with Kagi.

It's clear as to where Perplexity is eventually is going, and it will likely get acquired by Amazon. Here's why: [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41121821

One thing about Amazon is that I have never seen them overpay for an acquisition (as in they really penny pinch and negotiate hard). So Perplexity’s high price tag may turn Amazon off

I actually like Perplexity a lot. It's really good for doing research. But if this new chatGPT search thing is better, I'm gonna switch.

It took me about 5 minutes to figure out that Perplexity wasn't the product I needed. I'm not sure this is either, but we'll try it out just the same.

@forbiddenvoid what is the product you need?

2005 Google Search

Edit: I recognize that I may very well be in the minority, but when I use search, I am looking for sources, not answers. Everything Google has done to get in the way between me and the people who have the information I want has been a net negative from my perspective.

The interjection of AI here is just doing more of that.

have you considered the fact that they may not want you to have information?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com