Because in the article, there's only a tweet of him saying that Perplexity is "on standby to help", of which "offering to replace striking staff with AI" seems a pretty strong mischaracterization.
Update: The headline (but not the URL) was just changed to "Perplexity CEO offers AI company’s services to replace striking NYT staff" (emphasis mine).
> ...to help ensure your essential coverage is available to all through the election.
That sounds liking replacing striking staff to me, at least for the duration of the election. What other services of value except LLMs to write articles does Perplexity have to offer to the New York Times?
> That sounds liking replacing striking staff to me
That's my read too, but they could also e.g. lend them some engineers, have them build an election dashboard for them etc.
The fact that that would still be crossing the picket line, how realistic any of that is, or how genuine the offer, are all great questions/observations, but "replace with AI" seems like a quite dishonest editorialization in any case.
If editorialization is ever appropriate, this feels to me like the right time. Substantively, Perplexity make LLM tools - that's all they advertise on their website and what they are known for. Maybe they do have some jack-of-all-trade engineers who could turn their hands to web development or something, but there are also no doubt cleaners working at Perplexity. They aren't offering the New York Times help with the toilets!
Thank you for pointing that out; I missed it myself. That would imply that Perplexity's offer probably isn't even helpful in this situation, and it rather proves lxgr's point about TechCrunch's editorialization! It seems that the original journalist has made a correction:
> Though TechCrunch asked Perplexity for comment, Srinivas responded to TechCrunch’s post on X saying that “the offer was not to ‘replace’ journalists or engineers with AI but to provide technical infra support on a high-traffic day.” The striking workers in question, however, are the ones who provide that service to the NYT. It’s not really clear what services other than AI tools Perplexity could offer, or why they would not amount to replacing the workers in question. (However, in response to the clarification, we have opted to change the headline to reflect the claim that this offer was not necessarily specific to AI services.)
I don't think it's necessarily either-or. If he had the time to personally write the tweet, I think he would be willing to lend some engineers to help get them set up with their services.
> Hey AG Sulzberger @nytimes sorry to see this. Perplexity is on standby to help ensure your essential coverage is available to all through the election. DM me anytime here.”
> "Because if a "machine/AI" does the work, it's not scabbing!"
Who is claiming that in this thread, the linked Techcrunch article, or the tweet quoted in that article?
And even if the Perplexity CEO in particular, or AI tech executives generally were to make that claim elsewhere: Misquoting somebody to strengthen a point like that immediately and significantly reduces my trust in a source.
Also, I'd say that the fact that Techcrunch just changed the headline speaks for itself.
Oh, mine wasn't intended to be a literal quote from anyone, hence why I said `- executives, lying through their teeth.` and didn't name anyone specific.
But this notion is definitely rolling around in the heads of these people, even if they won't say so because it's bad optics. What a CEO/executive says and what they believe and what they do are three very different things. You often cannot trust their weasel words.
But as for "the PerplexityAI CEO didn't say "with AI" in those words!!!"... how else exactly would an AI company help out with striking workers without their product of AI? That is an obvious subtext unsaid.
This is pretty much implied here. Perplexity is an AI-focused company. They're trying to make money off of a shitty situation. AI is a "cheap" tool to use for this purpose. It's really, really scummy.
I'm not disagreeing with that assertion at all: He's clearly offering them something to sabotage the strike.
I'm just pointing out that "offering to help" does equal "offering to help with AI". Sure, it's somewhat heavily implied by context, but journalistic integrity means making it clear what's an implication and what somebody actually said.
TechCrunch even seems to agree: They changed the headline retroactively.
Because in the article, there's only a tweet of him saying that Perplexity is "on standby to help", of which "offering to replace striking staff with AI" seems a pretty strong mischaracterization.
Update: The headline (but not the URL) was just changed to "Perplexity CEO offers AI company’s services to replace striking NYT staff" (emphasis mine).