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I know Apple has had trouble in the AI area. My experience with Siri is lackluster at best. I haven’t tried other AI uses because of lack of need. But I decided to see what Perplexity had to say about this possible deal.

I went to www.perplexity.ai and asked “Why would Apple be interested in buying Perplexity?”
The answer was interesting but not particularly insightful.
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/why-would-apple-b...

If you use any AI, what do you use it for?

If you use any AI, what do you use it for?

Report writing. I'm mostly retired, but still do a bit of consulting here and there. A typical project might included summarizing previous work, including new data, and coming up with conclusions and recommendations. So I'll have Perplexity summarize prior reports. I still have to read the prior reports and understand them, but it is an enormous time saver to have AI do the writing. AI doesn't always get it exactly right, there is always some tweaking required, but it is a big time savings. Then I'll tell it what new data I have and what conclusions I want. Then it will spit out a paragraph or two. Which again requires tweaking, but the bones are there.

Another example is I had a bunch of data that were recorded on individual pdfs and then scanned. So I didn't have the actual pdfs, I had images. 120 images or something. So I asked Perplexity to compile all the data in a table, which it did. That saved me a huge amount of time.

I am certain I am scratching the very, very, surface of what other people are doing in this area. I'm pretty sure I'm ahead of most of my peers, but that won't be true for long.

I recently had ChatGPT create a travel agenda for me. In hindsight, it could have done a better job, but I didn't have to do it myself. But it created logical driving routes, hotel candidates (I specified IHG hotels), restaurant recommendations, and so on.

If you use any AI, what do you use it for?

Verbatim Perplexity searches of mine since June 1:

- As a rule of thumb, heavier elements are less common than lighter elements. One exception is iron, because of the stability of its nucleus. What are other exceptions, and the explanations for their prevalence?

- please show me a detailed map of the Alameda corridor in Los Angeles County

- As the PB4-Y squadrons in WWII were more likely to have to ditch than be shot down, were the crews adequately trained in parachuting and SEER, or was their survival training more to do with rafts on the open ocean?

- What is the most remote well-documented archeological find of Spanish armor in North America?

- What is the actual peer-reviewed data regarding glucosamine for dogs?

- Average CPI increase 01 January 2018 to present?

- please carefully discuss the precise differences between "persister" and "resistant" cancer cells as regards chemotherapy tolerance and reversibility

- Teddy Roosevelt statement along the lines of, I can either parent Alice or be President

- Please source and discuss context of "Caesar said: ruere in servitium"

-- sutton
dilettante

OK, since you asked (bolding mine):

Context and Meaning of "ruere in servitium"

The phrase "ruere in servitium" is found in Tacitus' Annals, specifically at the beginning of his account of the rise of Tiberius to power after the death of Augustus. The full Latin passage reads:

"At Romae ruere in servitium consules, patres, eques: quanto quis inlustrior, tanto magis falsi ac festinantes, vultuque composito, ne laeti excessu principis neu tristiores primordio, lacrimas, gaudium, questus adulationem miscebant."

A common translation is:

"Meanwhile at Rome, consuls, senators, and knights rushed into slavery; the more distinguished a man was, the more eager his hypocrisy, and his looks the more carefully studied, so as neither to betray joy at the death of the emperor nor sorrow at the rise of the new one, while they mingled tears, joy, complaints, and flattery."

Historical Context

This passage describes the political and social atmosphere in Rome following the death of Augustus and the accession of Tiberius as emperor. Tacitus is sharply critical of the Roman elite, depicting them as abandoning their republican virtues and eagerly submitting to the new autocratic order. The phrase "ruere in servitium" literally means "rushed headlong into servitude" or "plunged into slavery," and it refers to the willingness of Rome's highest classes—consuls, senators (patres), and knights (eques)—to abandon their independence and embrace the rule of the new emperor without resistance

.

Tacitus' use of "servitium" (servitude or slavery) is highly charged and ironic. He implies that the political freedom of the Republic has been lost, and that the governing classes are now more concerned with self-preservation and advancement through flattery and submission than with defending liberty or the public good. The passage is emblematic of Tacitus' broader critique of the early Roman Empire, where the forms of the old Republic are maintained, but the substance—libertas (freedom)—has been lost

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Tacitus' Perspective

Tacitus is not quoting Caesar directly; rather, he is narrating and interpreting the behavior of Rome’s elite in his own words. The phrase is part of his larger narrative strategy to highlight the moral decline and political servility that, in his view, characterized the transition from Republic to Empire. Tacitus often contrasts the libertas (freedom) of a few principled individuals with the servitium (servility) of the majority, especially among the senatorial class
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Conclusion

"Ruere in servitium" is a phrase used by Tacitus in his Annals to describe the eager submission of Rome’s ruling classes to imperial authority after Augustus’ death. It is a pointed commentary on the loss of republican freedom and the rise of political hypocrisy and servility in the early Empire. Tacitus uses this phrase to set the tone for his critical narrative of the principate and the moral state of Roman society under the emperors.

My use of AI (generally either ChatGPT or Copilot) is much more mundane. Finding obscure information that my Google searches couldn't (e.g. what is the name of the executive chef and their email address for a restaurant).

What I have'nt looked into, but would be interested in doing is to search, edit and modify the file structure and names stored on my hard disk. Of course, this also opens up all sorts of security issues.

Jeff

Finding obscure information that my Google searches couldn't

This is probably my biggest single use.

Anecdotally, it seems like the Google keyword search division is trying to improve its results (due to LLM competition) by guessing what you're really looking for, and as a result making it much worse because it isn't very good at guessing. The results seem more and more intent on giving you a very popular site within the general subject that you search for, rather than something related to what you actually typed. It seems happy to ignore 2 of 3 specific keywords if the third one is a popular subject. Switching to "verbatim" mode helps, and "advanced search", but not as much as you'd hope. It still gives you pages that don't contain the "mandatory" keywords if it has popular pages on the same subject. I really with there were a way to have mandatory keywords in the image search. (there are ways to specify this, but it seems not to do anything)

Perplexity does seem to do better than that. A large fraction of the results are wrong (you have to check the references), most particularly since it seems to have the original sin flaw of believing everything it reads on web pages including marketing blurbs, but it really does help. What I like most about Perplexity is that most sentences have footnotes saying where they got the information, and that the results are updated continually so you can ask about yesterday's news items.

A random recent search, I was looking for an LED driver that has a rotary dimmer knob right on the driver. No combination of keywords seemed able to find one, only dimmers that work *with* LED drivers. Perplexity found one right away.

I notice that it doesn't have a sense of spatial awareness. For example, asking for the three shops of type X closest to a specific location seems to give you results almost anywhere in that city. Currently, anyway.

I would like to get the Pro version, but I don't like the idea of all my queries being used to build a profile of me. I used to be in the profiling business, and once you have seen how the sausage is made you lean towards digital vegetarianism.

Jim

If you use any AI, what do you use it for?

Pretty much anything for which I used to use Google where I would check multiple search results. So now I just use Google for cases where the top result is the one I want e.g. the score of the hockey game.

Shopping is a good one. I recently was shopping for an amplifier and gave Perplexity the features I wanted and asked for the leading models in a certain price range. I could then ask follow-up questions on whether those models worked with the features of my existing equipment.

It's great for open-ended queries in areas in which I only have a passing knowledge. It gives me a summary that I would normally need to go through several websites to obtain. It then answers follow-up questions in the same context.

The riddle:

Using each of the numbers 2, 4, 6, 8 once and using multiplication, division, addition and subtraction (actually, subtraction is not needed), create an equation which equals 25.

For the heck of it, I tried three different AL's. None of them got it correctly, regardless of how many attempts. They did, however, try to justify their authoritative answers using arithmetic that a first grader could recognize as being wrong.

Jeff

Are you allowed to use factorial which is really just multiplication?

Aussi

Are you allowed to use factorial which is really just multiplication?

No - and you don't have to usee math any more complex than you (allegedly) learned in jjunior high school :-)

Jeff

How about the order of operations PEMDAS?

Well as factorials are not allowed.

4!+ (8/(6+2))=25

Aussi

I have another solution but it needs ()s.

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