Perplexity.AI

Perplexity.AI

Perplexity.AI is an AI based internet search engine. I hesitate to refer to this as artificial intelligence, so I will stick with AI.

Perplexity reads your input, question or request, does a search for the answer, interprets the the web pages that it finds, and gives you an answer along with links to the information sources, and often gives additional information and explanations. Free and without advertising, but I wouldn't expect that to last long.

It sometimes misinterprets my question and sometimes misinterprets the information sources. And there is no guarantee that the information sources are factual.

I used Perplexity to help with modifying my Android apps after Google required that they be updated to use level 34 the software development kit. This involved working with Java, Javascript, XML screen layouts, and Android Studio software. I hadn't used these tools in about a year and I had forgotten many details. Java and Javascript are similar enough but different enough to cause major confusion. Android XML screen layouts are major sources of confusion. And Android Studio has a nightmare of menu choices and many parts that needed updating separately without clear pathways. Perplexity handled these problems very nicely, giving instructions and code samples.

In addition, I wanted to improve some aspects of my code. For example, I knew that regular expression searches would speed some code, but writing the correct regular expression is not always easy. And it's better to be correct than fast. Perplexity helped quite a bit, but it often required multiple efforts to make it understand what I needed. (SQL queries present a similar situation but I have tried Perplexity there.)

Even better, finding the right way to integrate Android native touch screen control on top of a Webview HTML/Javascript screen was made easy. The first two suggestions failed, but the third worked well. The result was dramatically improved touch response.

And when I asked how I could speed up my code, several suggestions helped, including turning on hardware acceleration and Java compression.

Another important aspect of Perplexity is that it looks at a variety of web pages to obtain an answer. This saves me a lot of time searching through garbage web pages to find an answer. If I can't verify an answer, I will likely need to do my own filtering of the pages. And it gives me pages to look at. But if I can easily verify an answer, try it out and see if it works, WONDERFUL. Or YES - that's the word or person that I couldn't remember.

And another - sometimes you have to explain to Perplexity why it is wrong. If you have a good argument, it will apologize and give a new answer. For example, once it misinterpreted a web page that gave the weight of a violin bridge, assuming that it was the weight of the fingerboard. After I explained this, it corrected itself. But I asked if that new information was added to its knowledge base, the answer was no. Things learned when talking to me are not distributed outside of our conversation. Perhaps this is necessary to prevent people from spreading false information.

I just now had Perplexity write an htaccess script to redirect my web page urls so that a subdirectory would automatically redirect to the equivalent subdomain - www.ravitz.us/dance/*.* redirects to www.dance.ravitz.us/*.* . Looks like a correct script. Inmotion hosting doesn't recognize it. I don't think this is Perplexity's fault.

Overall - I like it. I don't know how much I would pay for it, but while it's free, I expect I will keep using it. Especially for verifiable answers, it is great.