Lost In Perplexity

Perplexity had its moment. The path forward is less clear.

Credit: Perplexity

A dozen or so journalists sat around a white oak table. Most of them were stiff and quiet. A few others were more active, clacking away on their keyboards in a bid to note every word tumbling out of the executives’ mouths. Perplexity powers curiosity glowed on a projector screen in a pleasant serif style.

The press wasn’t useful to Perplexity, one of the executives explained. The company doesn’t want to waste time on podcasts. They’re too focused on shipping features to engage in insular, navel-gazing AI drama. We don’t have fancy houses with wonderful dinners to impress you, he added. The chairs creaked in response.

Sometime during this executive’s spiel—maybe after his Epstein joke failed to get a reaction and he anxiously asked if it was recorded—I wrote that Perplexity seemed to have forgotten what it was trying to be.