so you might remember
this famous Google ad from 2010
and it was a fantastic commercial
that did a really effective job
of highlighting the potential
usefulness of search engines
whether they have lived up
to that potential?
I’ll leave for you to decide
but fast-forward to 2024
and now the AI powered
answer engine Perplexity
is revisiting that old ad
how many T-rexes can fit in the Grand Canyon?
theoretically it would take around 93.7 billion t-rexes to fill the Grand Canyon
so I’m a hard-boiled
skeptic of AI
but to paraphrase
the Simpsons’ Mr. Burns
I know what I hate
and I didn’t hate that
if generative AI can be used
to sift out the misinformation
and give us genuine accurate
answers to our questions
then it’s finally
being put to good use
now is Perplexity the specific
solution to that problem?
they’re asking me
for my honest opinion
and in honesty
I haven’t used it all that much
I haven’t had an opportunity
to really test it
so only time will tell
but access to accurate information
and good answers to our questions
are in short supply
and this absolutely feels like
the direction that our resources
and our time and energy
should be put toward