Perplexity wants to replace strikers with AI
Will cross the picket lines
The CEO of AI search company Perplexity, Aravind Srinivas, has offered to cross picket lines and provide services to mitigate the effect of a strike by New York Times tech workers.
The NYT Tech Guild announced its strike on Monday, months after setting November 4 as its deadline. The workers, who provide software support and data analysis for the Times, have been asking for an annual 2.5 per cent wage increase and to cement a current two-day-per-week in-office expectation, among other things.
Meanwhile, on X, Perplexity's CEO offered to step in for the striking workers. Replying to Semafor media editor Max Tani quoting the publisher, Srinivas wrote: "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."
Many on X immediately castigated Srinivas for acting as a scab. Scab behaviour is widely considered disreputable in matters of labour and equity. By undercutting collective action, scabs limit workers' ability to bargain with those in positions of power.
Srinivas may simply be trying to ensure people have the information they need on election day. The company recently unveiled its own election info hub and map. But offering its services explicitly as a replacement for striking workers was bound to be unpopular.
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 unclear what services other than AI tools Perplexity could offer or why they would not amount to replacing the workers in question.
On Friday, Perplexity launched an election information hub that relies on data from The Associated Press and Democracy Works to provide live updates and information about the 2024 US general election.
"Starting Tuesday, we'll be offering live updates on elections using data from The Associated Press so you can stay informed on presidential, senate, and house races at both a state and national level," Perplexity wrote in a blog post.
The site will pull data from data sources (called APIs) hosted by the two organisations. Perplexity's hub currently provides interactive information on voting requirements, poll times, and summaries about ballot measures, candidates, policy positions, and endorsements. Users can ask questions about the information, similar to a chatbot like ChatGPT.
Wary about accidentally providing misinformation, competitor AI assistants from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic currently direct users elsewhere or decline to answer election questions.
OpenAI's ChatGPT Search directs election result queries to The Associated Press and Reuters. Perplexity describes its new elections hub as "an entry point for understanding key issues."
But like other AI models, Perplexity can produce confabulations (plausible incorrect information) when generating responses. That could present an accuracy problem because the site's Voter Guide service uses AI language models to summarise and interpret information pulled from the web.
