Ep 23: Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas on the future of Search, OpenAI Wrappers and Using AI to Talk to Loved Ones

Perplexity is a next-gen search tool going after Google, with 1M Android app installs and 1M iOS installs within only 8 months of product launch. On this week’s episode of Unsupervised Learning, we sat down with the CEO and Co-Founder of Perplexity AI, Aravind Srinivas. Aravind shared with us the behind-the-scenes stories of how Perplexity AI was born (37:19), how he thinks about Perplexity being viewed as a "wrapper" (24:01), where search will be in 10 years (23:08), and where Perplexity is headed.

(0:00) intro

(0:48) the simplicity of Perplexity

(5:16) how Perplexity allocates resources

(7:09) don’t waste your time building your own models

(11:39) being a “wrapper” for OpenAI

(14:37) the future of Quora and Wikipedia

(19:38) what does it take to compete with Google

(23:08) what does search look like in 10 years

(24:01) showing users that Perplexity is more than a “wrapper”

(27:28) RAG solutions and solving hallucinations

(30:13) guiding users’ questions

(32:44) discover tab

(35:48) attracting new users vs. pleasing “power users”

(37:19) how Perplexity landed on search

(53:01) should AI be regulated?

(54:56) what other company would Aravind work at

(56:56) OpenAI

(58:42) Jacob and Pat debrief

With your co-hosts: 

@jacobeffron 

- Partner at Redpoint, Former PM Flatiron Health 

@patrickachase 

- Partner at Redpoint, Former ML Engineer LinkedIn 

@ericabrescia 

- Former COO Github, Founder Bitnami (acq’d by VMWare) 

@jordan_segall 

- Partner at Redpoint