but I haven’t ended up finding Pro to be much of an improvement
Oh. Then I’m surprised by this position. I find perplexity basic to be so superficial that I’d usually prefer to start with Claude even knowing it can’t cite anything and frequently makes errors.
All perplexity basic seems to do is google search and then summarize the contents of the results, which sometimes reduces the friction of researching something, but we know that google searches are not very thorough and often miss a lot of important stuff. I was hoping pro had more going on.
Sometimes I use it for finding examples of things. Perplexity is actually not good at finding things.
EG:
What are some single player games that kept some logic on company servers so that players couldn’t figure out secrets by decompiling the game code?
Perplexity: [looks at the pages you’d get if you just ran that as a google search] While there are no specific examples in the search results, I’m going to say some shit about the idea of doing that which very few people asking this question would need.
Claude: Spore, Diablo III, SimCity, No Man’s Sky, Assassin’s Creed Origins, Hitman [actually understands and engages with the question]
Oh, I just double-checked the claim about no man’s sky (and spore), and it almost certainly isn’t true o_o
Though the reason it gave, “preserving a sense of mystery of exploration” would have been a really good application for this, and I am kind of surprised they didn’t do it. Which at least partially satisfied my query. So still a somewhat useful example.
what are the rates of the most common intellectual disabilities in childhood
perplexity: [boring stuff, doesn’t list the disabilities]
claude: [lists some disabilities and] Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD): Estimated 2-5% of school-age children in the US [o}o !!!]
And I was able to corroborate that claim and this has substantially impacted my worldview. It’s the most common cause of childhood intellectual disability. I then looked up the FASD subreddit and had a real heartwrenching time.
Another weird example
Is natto considered mogumogu
perplexity: yes
claude: no, mogumogu means chewy [ongoing conversation] oh you’re thinking of neba-neba
And I can’t imagine having a conversation with Perplexity in this way, though I’m not sure why it’s so bad at that. They seem to have made it so that it forgets all of the context in followup questions.
I often feel like Perplexity’s LLM parts, the clever parts, the synthesis, is flattened away, all it’s allowed to do is recite.
Huh, yeah, does seem like Claude was the winner there. I reproed the intellectual disability answers and got the same results you did. I was able to get a better answer from Perplexity with a slight rephrase, but I hate having to play the rephrase game with AIs so that’s a modest mitigator. And the answer was not internally consistent
I think the difference between us might be that I do primarily want a search engine, and perhaps my natural phrasing works better with Perplexity.
Have you tried exa.ai? Maybe that’s the crux, it’s doing semantic search, perplexity doesn’t seem to be, so exa maybe takes over its niche and also makes me kinda mad at it for not doing the most transformative thing these engines could be doing.
Interesting that perplexity also doesn’t put FASD at the top despite it being so common.
Oh. Then I’m surprised by this position. I find perplexity basic to be so superficial that I’d usually prefer to start with Claude even knowing it can’t cite anything and frequently makes errors.
All perplexity basic seems to do is google search and then summarize the contents of the results, which sometimes reduces the friction of researching something, but we know that google searches are not very thorough and often miss a lot of important stuff. I was hoping pro had more going on.
I assume you’re using claude pro? Because I found the top free version unusable.
Could you post some questions you’ve run on both and their answers?
Pro and free are currently using the same model.
Sometimes I use it for finding examples of things. Perplexity is actually not good at finding things.
EG:
Oh, I just double-checked the claim about no man’s sky (and spore), and it almost certainly isn’t true o_o
Though the reason it gave, “preserving a sense of mystery of exploration” would have been a really good application for this, and I am kind of surprised they didn’t do it. Which at least partially satisfied my query. So still a somewhat useful example.
And I was able to corroborate that claim and this has substantially impacted my worldview. It’s the most common cause of childhood intellectual disability. I then looked up the FASD subreddit and had a real heartwrenching time.
Another weird example
And I can’t imagine having a conversation with Perplexity in this way, though I’m not sure why it’s so bad at that. They seem to have made it so that it forgets all of the context in followup questions.
I often feel like Perplexity’s LLM parts, the clever parts, the synthesis, is flattened away, all it’s allowed to do is recite.
Huh, yeah, does seem like Claude was the winner there. I reproed the intellectual disability answers and got the same results you did. I was able to get a better answer from Perplexity with a slight rephrase, but I hate having to play the rephrase game with AIs so that’s a modest mitigator. And the answer was not internally consistent
I think the difference between us might be that I do primarily want a search engine, and perhaps my natural phrasing works better with Perplexity.
Have you tried exa.ai? Maybe that’s the crux, it’s doing semantic search, perplexity doesn’t seem to be, so exa maybe takes over its niche and also makes me kinda mad at it for not doing the most transformative thing these engines could be doing.
Interesting that perplexity also doesn’t put FASD at the top despite it being so common.