[HN Gopher] Personal Computer by Perplexity
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Personal Computer by Perplexity
Author : josephwegner
Score : 66 points
Date : 2026-03-11 18:22 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.perplexity.ai)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.perplexity.ai)
| dakial1 wrote:
| So Perplexity's openclaw? Hopefully more secure?
| gtowey wrote:
| > There is a kill switch
|
| ...because this thing _will_ go rogue faster than you can blink.
|
| I swear, it's like nobody at the company even reads the slop
| they're generating or thinks about it for any amount of time. In
| what world is advertising a kill switch as one of its essential
| features a positive? It's basically admitting from the start that
| this is unreliable.
| observationist wrote:
| They replaced their production staff with clawbot, it's all
| part of the plan.
|
| There's a sense of "early bitcoin" around clawbot and other
| agent frameworks. I think if you wait for another 2 years for
| it to mature, you'll have missed out as if you waited ten years
| after bitcoin began.
|
| They're insecure and janky, sure, but on the other hand you've
| got millions of dollars of compute and tens of thousands of
| very motivated developers working on making them secure,
| reliable, and competent. There's something magical about AI
| that actually gets real work done while you're doing other
| things, and that's what Perplexity is probably hoping to sell.
|
| Just need a reliable local model, though - AirLLM, other hacks
| allow you to run bigger models more slowly, so you can build
| out a completely API-free scheme to run pretty capable agents
| even without big GPUs.
|
| Could be a Moravec's paradox thing - all these people are
| thinking that the solution looks enticingly within reach, but
| it might be an absolutely horribly complicated quagmire with no
| easy solution short of AGI. I'd bet on clawbots and agents
| being very secure and great to work with in the very near term,
| though.
| HumanOstrich wrote:
| Stop posting AI slop, especially slop pull requests like the one
| you made to OpenClaw. Learn the first thing about a project you
| want to monetize and make fake contributions to. For example,
| OpenClaw is overwhelmed with slop PRs and the author has talked
| about this a lot.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Oh no, April Fool's Day is going to be tremendously awful this
| year, isn't it
| ch4s3 wrote:
| It's been perpetual April 1st since November 30th, 2022.
| recursive wrote:
| > the computer lives with you.
|
| What does this mean? The computer isn't alive. It's physically
| located on my person? Phones and watches have already cracked
| this.
|
| If I say "Bob lives with me", that just mean that they generally
| share a residence with me. Desktop PCs already do that.
|
| I just don't understand what's even intended by this.
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| > I just don't understand what's even intended by this.
|
| I might be misinterpreting, but according to the landing page,
| this is the intention:
|
| > Personal Computer gives Perplexity Computer and the Comet
| Assistant always-on, local access to your machine's files,
| apps, and sessions through a continuously running compact
| desktop.
|
| > It's a persistent digital proxy of you. Controllable from any
| device, anywhere.
|
| That being said, the grandeur and bombastic language also seems
| fitting for something less sinister, like an even worse version
| of MS Recall maybe? Combined with, let's say... _agents_!
|
| That's it! You Personal Computer is your agent and not only may
| act on your behalf, it also communicates your preferences and
| intentions.
|
| Futuristic, right?
| thedanbob wrote:
| > What does this mean? The computer isn't alive.
|
| But they want you to think of it as alive. They're
| anthropomorphizing it.
| recursive wrote:
| If you stop paying this subscription, this living computer
| with the googly puppy eyes _gets it_. You wouldn 't want
| anything bad to happen to your best friend, would you? _soft
| whimpering sounds_
| d--b wrote:
| OH so that's why it's called Perplexity!
| QQ00 wrote:
| Openclaw + Microsoft Recall = Personal computer by perplexity. At
| least this is my interpretation from reading that web page.
| jkestner wrote:
| Sneaky use of an almost Garamond, but the copy ain't Chiat\Day.
| password54321 wrote:
| No moat. If you rely on OpenAI / Google / Anthropic you are
| doomed.
| chrismarlow9 wrote:
| Do you feel the same about AWS?
| paxys wrote:
| Which side are you implying AWS is on?
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Blog post: https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/everything-is-
| computer
| par wrote:
| read it and have no idea what it does
| cedws wrote:
| I think it's an LLM wrapper.
| gensym wrote:
| Zombo.com
| viksit wrote:
| underrated comment haha. made my day
| claysmithr wrote:
| Wow they designed a computer I don't want
| ncr100 wrote:
| Say more?
| Zambyte wrote:
| > Personal Computer runs on a dedicated Mac mini that can run
| 24/7, connected to your local apps and Perplexity's secure
| servers.
|
| https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/everything-is-computer
|
| They designed a program (copied OpenClaw) and called it a
| computer
| bisonbear wrote:
| sounds like it's another openclaw-as-a-service provider?
| paxys wrote:
| Whatever happened to Preplexity? They were all the rage a year or
| two ago, and now I hear...nothing. Is the product still being
| used? Making money? Or just overtaken by the base LLMs it was
| relying on?
| realityfactchex wrote:
| It's still there. For Joe Shmoe, in terms of general purpose,
| ask it a question, LLM use, Perplexity is solidly in the
| following lineup, as I understand it:
|
| - Perplexity: This one has been promoted on (insert general
| audience media skewing toward the older set) enough to be a
| household name still.
|
| - ChatGPT: General people in some demographics (see immediately
| above) are averse to this, on account of negative publicity its
| parent company has received. (Still very strong popularity and
| positive sentiment in some demographics, though)
|
| - Claude: Some semi-literates have glommed onto this one,
| possibly as a result of its more recent success among the
| developer set.
|
| - Grok: People can be either for or against, based on how they
| feel about its owning company and its ownership; no more need
| be said
|
| - Gemini: Again, if you are in the universe of its owning
| company (or decidedly not), the draw (or repulsion) can be
| strong here.
|
| For _general LLM use_ , the above are all about the same. To be
| clear, this is just me shooting from the hip for how each
| offering might be viewed. IMO, it's not a bad idea to submit
| the same input to each and see how they compare, if one is so
| inclined.
| paxys wrote:
| TL;DR - Perplexity-branded OpenClaw
| eitally wrote:
| Ten years ago I would have thought this was an excellent April
| Fool's Day launch. Now I just think it's foolish.
| tartoran wrote:
| Page is unreabable on smaller phone such as my IPhone SE as text
| gets cropped out on the sides and cannot be zoomed out. Did I
| miss anything?
| SirensOfTitan wrote:
| The generic elevator music used for the demo video is highly
| representative of this whole concept: generic and derivative.
|
| Seriously though, Perplexity, like most of the AI wrapper
| companies, seems unable to innovate much beyond the query-
| response chat paradigm. I don't understand why VCs continue to
| fund these ai-slop companies. I see a new company's
| advertisements on the NY subway every week, and they're all the
| same: Anthropic/Google/OpenAI resellers who are selling some UI
| wrapper (or at best a bespoke model worse than the flagships) on
| top of pretty basic prompt engineering or tools.
|
| This is what happens when we invert the product-paradigm: we're
| not solving problems with technology, we're taking technology and
| applying it to problems.
|
| I use AI every day, so I'm hardly a luddite, but this bubble is
| so ridiculous at this point. This perplexity product, more than
| any other so far, feels so representative of peak craze.
| jcims wrote:
| From the blog post
| (https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/everything-is-computer)
|
| >Personal Computer runs on a dedicated Mac mini that can run
| 24/7, connected to your local apps and Perplexity's secure
| servers.
| snek_case wrote:
| Surely a highly innovative product that will sell in high
| volumes /s
| skyberrys wrote:
| I need someone who can translate marketing to help me out here.
| All the other comments seem equally baffled as to what this is.
| This is clashing with my idea of a personal computer with an AI
| operating system. Did anyone figure out what chip it uses, if
| it's local only, does it have a screen or do I plug in
| peripherals?
| irusensei wrote:
| >Personal Computer
|
| >Depends on our SaaS
|
| Pick one.
| _pdp_ wrote:
| > In a study of over 16,000 queries, measured against
| institutional benchmarks from McKinsey, Harvard, MIT, BCG, and
| others, we determined Perplexity Computer saved our internal
| teams $1.6M in labor costs and performed 3.25 years of work in
| only four weeks. And now we're extending those same capabilities
| to other teams.
|
| This is a wild statement that does not seem to be supported by
| any actual data.
|
| What does it mean? Does clicking on a link counts as labor.
| mhitza wrote:
| The video concept is great, and how I often have been thinking
| that personal digital assistants would make sense.
|
| Basing this concept on what we have today with LLMs is a call for
| chaos, unreliability and slop communication; at best.
| suobset wrote:
| I love (read, hate) the trend of using Serif fonts and marketing
| material that pull on nostalgic vibes. Surely, AI has been
| revolutionary in its own regard, for better or worse. But, the
| more they go into 80/90s style advertising, the more the allure
| of it dies.
|
| Also this "system" just seems vulnerable af.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Could it just be a new trend? There are just two options in
| this case (serifs or no), so I'd expect it to flip back and
| forth sometimes.
|
| The broader trend is pulling back a bit on "minimalism," right?
| I think we hit peak (or valley?) minimalism already so I guess
| there's only one way to go.
| d_silin wrote:
| It is an OS with AI chat interface, as far as I can understand.
| maxaw wrote:
| Most perplexing product description I've read in some time from a
| major company
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(page generated 2026-03-11 23:00 UTC)