What's up everyone? So how badly do you want to pay me $2,400 a year? And in exchange,
I'll give you a web browser that was originally built and given away for free.
It's not it. Hold on, does it catch? I'm not done yet. In addition to that,
my version actually spies on everything that you do. So I can sell that data and make even
more money. In addition to that, it also tracks your location. It injects ads that I think will
psychologically manipulate you the best in order to buy the product that I'm getting paid to
shield to you. And again, it doesn't stop there either. It also builds a permanent profile on you
so that even if you discontinue using the service, I could still sell that data retroactively
after the fact. Sounds great, right? I mean, don't you want to sign up for that service?
I mean, right off the bat, paying for a web browser that was free to begin with is kind
of moronic at best. And that's kind of where we're at here. Like what we're talking about today
is just that because that's kind of the nightmare that's coming into play.
Yesterday, Perplexity actually just launched a new product that's an AI web browser. And
this video won't be endorsing or an endorsement of said product. Like if you haven't caught on to that
yet with the complete opposite of that, they're calling it Comet and I'm calling it Clownware
because that's actually what it is. At the end of the video, I'll actually show you how you
can use locally hosted AI that keeps your data your own and you can run it on your own
computer. And I'm talking about those people out there that are using that CRT monitor from 1997
that runs on old hardware too. And I'll show you not only how you can actually include your own AI
into an actual privacy browser, but also how to set it up. And not only is that method privacy
preserving, but it also gives you the full control over it and it's free. But like for now,
let's get back to actually cooking this ridiculous product. The Perplexity CEO who is this guy right
here and has a name that I'm not even going to try to pronounce because in that case I'll sound
as stupid as the product that they just launched and are trying to show. But he stated in a
podcast that tracking everything you do online is the entire point of building this browser.
I'm not even joking. You just cannot make this up. It's really what he actually said.
The actual quote was we're able to know what users are doing inside of Perplexity,
but not what they're doing elsewhere. And that was the key reason to build comment.
Like in all seriousness, like screw this guy. This company wants your purchase history,
travel details, browsing patterns, just everything to build ad profiles and diversify revenue making
by turning you into a cash cow. And in more than one ways, you pay them $200 a month
to spy on you. And they also get to sell your data. Google Chrome is free. Met his
charges premium prices for the same surveillance model that made literally everyone distrust
those companies to begin with. So you would be paying $2,400 annually to have all of your digital
activity harvested and monetized. Like you said, screw Perplexity. Seriously. Like now,
based on his own comments, when people actually started flipping out about this,
rightfully so, he tried backpoddling so hard that I sincerely thought like he was going to snap
his metaphorical head. And he started off saying that his comments were taken out of
context, which is asinine. And it's absurd. It would be like you pausing this video right now
and going and seeing me make a comment that comment was like this great thing in some other
place. And my negative comments about Perplexity's clownware here were just taken out of context.
And like now you see why I call it backpeddling. It's really what it is at the end of the day.
In addition to that, all of a sudden, there are like opt out features and privacy modes that
exist is just corporate damage control. None of the new features are actually meant to be useful
to you, but rather to make you feel comfortable. It's kind of like handing out pillows in a torture
chamber to kind of soften the chairs or putting soothing music in a slaughterhouse so that the
animals stay more calm. Like those privacy controls are theater at the end of the day.
They exist for one reason, so that you shut up and keep using their product.
And nobody reads the terms of service. Obviously, it's very well known. Like when's the last time
you actually did? Well, I do. I read them because I'm not normal. I could say 10 parts, but I'll
keep it to three. That way I don't go out of control. The first is when they say you agree
that Comet may monitor your use of the site to ensure quality, improve the service,
and to verify your compliance. Essentially, this means that they already give themselves permission
to track everything that you do right from the start. Privacy controls really don't actually change
any of that. According to this language, anyways, their own language. And they also buried
this gem. We may modify the terms and our services at any time in our sole discretion.
So what that means is they can change the rules whenever they want, however they want.
And if you keep using the browser, then that means you already agree to it. So
all of that kind of means that they can do whatever they want,
whatever they want. My favorite one is this last one, all provisions of these terms,
which by their nature should survive will survive. Now that's legal speak for we keep
your data even after you leave. And once they've built the profile on you, they keep it,
whether they say that to you or not, that's what they're doing. Now mind you, this is all
like their own documentation, all their own statements, their privacy policy.
It's the default behavior basically, and the default behavior is maximum data extraction.
It's their own fine print that actually proves it. The entire fraudulent concept of the AI
browser in general to me is trashed. These companies pushed this narrative that their
specialized browsers are somehow required for AI assistance during browsing sessions and that
is just false. Brave browser already supports local large language models running directly
inside of it. And models like Quen, 0.5 B are lightweight enough to actually operate
on almost any machine produced in the last five years. Or in some cases, even computers that were
like cutting edge further, while back older. And again, that goes out to my CTR homies that are
out there with their 80 pound monitors. But with Brave and Olamah working together,
users can actually access full private AI tools. And that's with no subscriptions, right?
Harvesting of data, corporate middlemen, or cost, for that matter. Can it plan a trip
to France for you? I haven't been able to do that, but it doesn't pimp me out to advertisers
and for money. So that's good. I think that's kind of a fair tradeoff.
The setup process is also really easy. So first you go to Olamah site and you download
the application and you install it. And then you go pull the model you want to use.
And you could pull as many as you like, but in this case, we're pulling one. And
the vast majority of people should be able to run this with ease, like I said before.
Connect it to Brave by opening up the bring your own model feature. And you do that by holding
control and hitting B on the keyboard or go to the show sidebar icon at the top.
And here we can see a bunch of different options that we can actually select.
Out of the most important ones are our ability to choose the actual default model that we will
be actually using in the future. And this is where we can do that. If you scroll down,
you'll also see the ability to connect self hosted or like third party LLMs, if you wanted to use
a specific service, select add model. The first field that we see is a label.
For this, you could put in almost anything. And this, but this is what's going to show up
when you go to select a model after hitting control B. For this example, we'll just put
Quemp. And the model request name is going to be the name that Olamah uses, which in this
case is going to be Quen 306B, basically. The server endpoint is just where our
contact is in this case. And in this case, it's going to be basically a local host
with a port number. If this doesn't work for you, you can replace it in with the 127.0.0.1,
which is also a local host. The contact size is just a maximum number of tokens
the model can actually handle in a single conversation or prompt. And for this model,
that number is 32,768. Next is the API key, which we'll skip because we're running it locally because
we're awesome. And we don't have to use API keys. So the system prompt is just a default
instruction or personality that you want. And for me, I'll put be concise, factual,
indirect, and avoid lists. Since this model does not actually support vision,
we're going to leave this as is. Next, click save model. And from that moment on,
everything runs locally. Conversations stay on your machine. Nothing leaves your actual device.
There's no hidden processes or siphoning data in the background. And this solution is so effective
that it makes products like Comet to some degree, look ridiculous. And naturally,
perplexity avoids actually mentioning things like this, because in that case, there's nothing to
sell when privacy actually remains in their hands. Now their business model collapses the moment
that people actually realize that other options exist. Now I realize that obviously the difference
between kind of these two products, in fact, is pretty great. And my example, obviously,
excludes a lot of automation that is actually present in Comet. And I will absolutely concede
that point. However, I think, as I said before, that the trade off is absolutely worth it.
The timing of Comet's release also makes everything kind of more transparent.
Google is facing a antitrust lawsuit from the Department of Justice over Chrome's dominance
in the browser marketplace. And some proposals even call for Google to actually sell Chrome.
And all of a sudden, every AI company starts announcing their own browsers. Perplexity has
already expressed interest in acquiring Chrome, which kind of says everything about their actual
priorities. None of these companies are actually trying to build better browsers, right? They're
assembling surveillance hubs, basically, and making users pay for the privilege of being spied on.
They've realized that the whole browser methodology is kind of the most powerful data
collection device in the digital ecosystem that you can have. Every search, transaction,
page view, workflows, all of it goes through it. And whoever controls it controls the entire
flow of behavioral data. And therefore, the revenue attached to it. And even the AI features
in Comet kind of reveal how shallow the offering actually is. Features like the tab
management and email summarization. They've existed for years through very basic browser
extensions that exist. And the local tools that don't need to spy on anyone like the product
being sold is the user's behavior kind of packaged and auctioned to the highest bidder. And like,
let's forget Facebook as the world's real ID database, which it is, this entire model is
surveillance capitalism kind of finely tuned for maximum profitability.
Where unlike Facebook, the user actually puts the bill for the surveillance and they figured out
how to convince people to fund their own exploitation and surveillance and turn around and
proudly call it innovation. And there'll be plenty of YouTubers who will be out here and
they'll be like, once they get access to exclusive access to it, which just means
they're paid shills and in turn are now shilling how great it is. And you'll see the same kind of
nonsense with VPNs. Like a good rule of thumb is if you see a YouTuber shilling it, walk away.
Don't buy it. I don't even like want you to believe me. I'm absolutely a fan of people
trying to prove me wrong. And the reason for that is because when they actually do it
effectively, I get to learn something for free and no cost to me. Like I have no ego.
So this pattern isn't limited to perplexity either. Like I'm not just coming at them.
Every major AI company is now pushing the same stupid $200 subscription tier,
like open AI, Google, Anthropic, all of them. Some more or less, but the vast majority somehow
magically all landed on the same price point that says that there's nothing actually accidental
about it. Now the price itself is the marketing pitch. Charging up and people assume that it's
actually worthwhile. The idea, like if you want to reference it is from research done by Rao and
Roe back in 1989, as called price quality inference and open source solutions keep
advancing rapidly. Local models grow more and more capable every single month and privacy
focused browsers continue adding AI functionality that has no surveillance.
Furthermore, you have functionality in some of the tools, like anything LLM, for example,
which is absolutely amazing that lets you do things like summarize emails or notices via
scraping, right? Anything LLM is totally free and another solution that is totally
local, like it allows for the creation of agents as well and workflows for them at
anyways. The tools these companies are charging premium prices for are already becoming widely
accessible to anyone actually willing to just invest a very small amount of time. AI powered
browsing could absolutely be remarkable. I think it would be revolutionary if it wasn't actually
deliberately tied to surveillance, research tools, article summaries, workflow management,
like none of it actually requires giving up privacy. Like these are capabilities that
already exist through open source tools that keep the user in full control and their data
in their hands. And I'm far from like a subject matter expert in AI or local AI for that matter,
like, but I'd love to know about any, like local solutions that you know about. So please
drop them in the comments. But every time someone picks a surveillance based software
over a private alternative, essentially they are voting for a future where privacy becomes a luxury.
Surveillance ends up becoming the standard and everything about their digital life becomes
a product on someone else's balance sheet. And that is until the data breach happens.
And a lot of these companies are actually coming out with these AI browsers, like you said
before, perplexity is the only one. And I see it as a gamble that if enough people are willing to pay
to be surveilled, that most users will never actually discover alternatives and that convenience
will continue to outweigh any kind of concern for privacy. If they win, this market will shift
permanently the tech industry as a possibility will remove the distinction between privacy and
convenience altogether. And at that point, it wouldn't be necessarily whether you're willing to
trade privacy for ease of use, but it'll be about whether you're allowed to participate at all.
We have the ability to vote with our dollars. It's the most powerful way to vote. And
it's just the gorst in me that loves that power. If we have nothing else, we have that
ability. And it's going to be interesting seeing what people actually choose. And typically, it's
not good decisions that they choose, but my hope is that they choose well, and that development
on those open source projects continues to ramp up and evolve and hopefully can crowdsource enough
people to be able to knock these other projects out of the box or make it so that what they
offer doesn't come close to what the open source community can offer. So anyways, oh, I saw this
came out. I wanted to make a quick video on it. Thank you for watching to the end, and I'll see you