Aravind Srinivas, Founder of Perplexity AI, discusses combining LLMs with databases and search indexes to create a conversational answer engine. Topics include: journey to launching Perplexity, comparison to Bard and Chat GPT, preventing hallucinations in AI, and challenges of being a founder in a fast-paced environment.
Perplexity AI is a conversational answer engine that combines large language models with databases and search indexes to provide factual answers with citations.
Perplexity AI aims to gradually develop its own models and search indexes while partnering with OpenAI to establish itself as a reliable answer engine.
Deep dives
Perplexv AI: The World's First Conversational Answer Engine
Perplexv AI is a conversational answer engine that directly provides answers and engages in conversation. Unlike traditional search engines, Perplexv AI focuses on providing concise and accurate answers to user queries. By combining the power of large language models with search indexes and databases, Perplexv AI creates an answer engine that can answer questions across various topics. With support from academic and AI luminaries, Perplexv AI has gained traction and offers a feature-rich experience that surpasses the relevance and reliability of traditional search engines.
The Journey of Perplexv AI: From PhD Student to Startup Founder
Perplexv AI was founded by Eriven Srinivas, a former AI researcher at UC Berkeley, OpenAI, Google, and DeepMind. Inspired by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Eriven decided to venture into entrepreneurship and create a search engine that goes beyond mere links and provides direct answers to users' queries. Starting with a small team and limited funding, Perplexv AI focused on building a clean and simple product that excels in providing accurate answers. By staying true to their vision, Perplexv AI has gained a dedicated user base and continues to iterate and improve their product.
The Inner Workings of Perplexv AI
Perplexv AI operates through a combination of search indexes and large language models. When a user enters a query, Perplexv AI reformulates it and sends it to traditional search indexes to gather relevant links. These links are then fed to a language model that generates concise and accurate answers, written with citations and source links. The process ensures that Perplexv AI can provide reliable information while maintaining the ability to converse and answer follow-up questions. As the technology improves, Perplexv AI aims to reduce hallucinations and further enhance the accuracy of its answers.
Perplexv AI's Journey Towards Autonomy
Perplexv AI recognizes the future potential of developing its own models and search indexes. While currently relying on the OpenAI API and external indexes, Perplexv AI plans to gradually invest in developing proprietary models and indexes alongside OpenAI's offerings. This gradual approach allows Perplexv AI to focus on building a successful product and gather user feedback, all while maintaining the flexibility to adapt and partner with OpenAI's advanced models. By prioritizing user satisfaction and staying lean, Perplexv AI aims to establish itself as a reliable and competitive player in the answer engine space.
As part of our recurring "Thursday Night's in AI" fireside series, we had the chance to interview Aravind Srinivas about his journey building Perplexity AI.
Aravind founded Perplexity in 2022 with the mission to combine the reasoning power of LLMs with databases and search indexes to create a "conversational answer engine" that provides factual answers with citations to questions on any topic.
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