I Didn't Want to Like This...

[00:01] I've been wasting my time for months. I'm going a little crazy. I didn't want built some very cool and overly engineered AI systems. I've got my personal AI infrastructure inside cloud code, 103 skills, multiple models,

[00:14] Gemini, Codex, image generation. I'm using open claw with over seven agents. My setup is pretty sick. I like it. And then Perplexity drops Perplexity computer. 200 bucks a month, 19 AI models, runs in the cloud while you

[00:27] sleep. That's the pitch. And it kind of does all of this frustratingly well. tool to make this work, which I don't like. Now I know that sounds very hypy, We're going to put that aside here. Separate reality from hype. But

[00:41] seriously, I tell it something to do something. I make a wish. And it's not even a good prompt. And it just makes things. Like this gaming website for my a cult I found here in Japan while eating at their deli. And I'm just

[00:53] from screaming and typing in half-baked prompts. [music] I didn't see this myself. And had me rethinking my approach to how I build AI systems. I spend way too much time building these systems. I stay up late. The first thing

[01:06] can just do this one thing." Or I have to add this new thing that just came out. And that happens every 5 minutes. I love building all these tools. It's fun to play with. And that's the thing. I'm just playing. I'm not actually using

[01:18] the tools for what I want them to do. I'm just sharpening my axe. That's what people say, right? I spent all of my idea energy on creating those tools. Perplexity computer, there was no axe to sharpen. It just was already there.

[01:31] Frankly, I don't need more tools. I realized that I need a box. And you know, Perplexity computer became my box for a moment. And it did well. So let's look inside that box. Like what is this thing? Why is Chuck so jazzed about it?

[01:44] I'm not so jazzed about it. Shut up. But it is pretty cool. We'll talk about These things are so tiny. You want to come with me to get some coffee in Japan? Let's go. This is how I get coffee here in Japan.

[01:57] coffee here in Japan. >> [music]

[02:20] Coffee break. Honestly, when I first saw it, I was a user, right? So I come to Perplexity and I see this, a little chat box like every other AI. And then to access computer, you click on this.

[02:34] And watch what happens. You ready? Almost nothing. And then I realized something. This is Claude code without the terminal. It's all of that, but you don't need a degree

[02:47] already set up. It's already there. So I'm looking at this and I'm like, where Like where are the tools? No, no. This is already done. All you have to do is just type in what you want to happen. Tell it what you want. Make a wish. Now,

[03:02] I used to work for Blockbuster. Yes, I'm old. And one thing I miss was the POS the point of sale system that we used to rent videos out to people. It was command line, actually. I want to see if Perplexity computer can rebuild that

[03:16] experience of working at Blockbuster. Don't you want that? Fun fact, I went to the last Blockbuster in Oregon. They still use that same system. It runs off still use that same system. It runs off floppy drives. It's crazy.

[03:33] We're seeing this live together. I've made my wish. Let's submit it. And there this, I'm going to show you four things that I think make Perplexity computer bit awesome. And we're going to get a bit nerdy because how it works is kind

[03:48] of cool. Like for example, right now, our prompt went to the meta router, become the orchestrator or the conductor, a high-thinking model. It will normally choose Opus 4.6. It's this orchestrator model that will then

[04:00] gross, but it's not. It's just trying to figure out what I want. What is Chuck's task? Is it a recurring scheduled task, which we can do that? How big is this sometimes it'll even ask you clarifying questions if you're not clear. I was

[04:14] clear. My prompt was awesome. Now, right away we can see that it's loading up some skills, website building, research assistant. And yes, Perplexity computer or you can bring your own. It's creating a research plan. Actually, this is the

[04:27] Now, you'll notice that Perplexity computer will use whatever model it can to do the best job. It's model agnostic. Again, 19 frontier models, and it will it's trying to accomplish. Big think stuff, Opus 4.6. Research, Gemini 3.1

[04:43] Pro. Images, Gemini Nano Banana Pro. Oh, okay. Look what's happening here. Right here, it launched its own computer. And this is what puts the computer in Perplexity computer. Each subtask will get its own isolated compute

[04:55] microVMs. Such a fun name. Two virtual CPUs, 8 gigs of RAM, and they boot in see what it's doing. It's hitting some roadblocks on trying to access Reddit. Woah, what a partner. But, it figured it out. It found some game, Blockbuster 3D,

[05:11] pretty cool. And notice this computer is just like its own computer, that agent can then read that document. They have a shared file workspace. It found the Blockbuster CSR Handbook. Oh my gosh. And notice the model it's

[05:25] You had to be smart to work at Blockbuster. finally start building. It launches another Firecracker VM. Sorry, that was lame. And it does this for a while, about 14

[05:39] thing, and I'm not even sure if it's number one now. I think we're number about Perplexity computer, is that you can just walk away. You can close your It's happening in the cloud. And then you can just pick up your phone and

[05:52] pretty much the same. Computer is now built into the Perplexity app. And I'm trains and stuff, and it's pretty fun. Because it looks just like this.

[06:05] deliver to you kind of a way to access this in your terminal. It's like just a website right here. Like watch. I could download the HTML, or I could just click website I can just share with people and use. I think this is fully functional.

[06:17] Let's check it out. It looks good. I kind of forgot what the Blockbuster POS is accurate. If you used to work for Blockbuster, please tell me if this Blockbuster, please tell me if this looks good. Okay.

[06:31] [sighs] >> It's booting. to try something here. I want to tell it every hour, I want you to improve one rather. Make it better, make it more realistic. I can tell it that, and it

[06:45] number of the things I've built, and it's so cool. It works so well. That's what I I think it's number five, maybe of the things I like, is you can do cron or schedule jobs. And that's my favorite example, just making something

[06:59] better every hour. It's insane on my wallet, but it's still pretty fun. app. You could also do, "Hey, check my email every 5 minutes." or "Check the news every day and alert me if something crazy's going on." "Send me a Slack

[07:13] all this I can do with the stuff I've built. I use multiple models. I can do scheduled things. I can do research. I can have my apps visualize and check things, but goodness, this just did it. No tooling

[07:28] tweaking. It just made it happen. And that was one prompt. One prompt to a wife and kids just to see what they could build. My middle daughter, Milly, off. Again, I'll show you what they built at the end of the video. but let

[07:42] me show you what else I built with this, and it's kind of crazy. for my kids. I hate it when my kids play these dumb gaming websites. They play game where it's just a big ball of poop. It's a little bit funny. But still, I

[07:57] need to have a little bit of control on that. So, I'm like, "You know what? You make." That's the new rule. That's the new game. Now, this isn't my first time trying to build a gaming website for my kids. I've tried this twice now, and it

[08:10] failed. Second time I kind of did it, but it was janky, and it took me weeks. And if you've never done this for your kids or your family, you should do this yourself right now. Here is my prompt. I gave it a few ideas for games and stuff.

[08:25] want to make it work, and then it just went to town building it. And here's what it gave me. Again, I had no prompts beyond the initial prompt. Let's play it. Here's my games. It's got sound effects. Let's play Pug

[08:37] It's got sound effects. Let's play Pug Dash. >> [laughter] >> You look at this. >> Isn't that amazing? Let's try one more. Neon Racer.

[09:05] to stop there, right? So, I asked it to add some login. So, I want to be able to admin this and add logins for my kids. I want a leaderboard, high scores. And like, "Why don't you improve this every hour?" Then I bumped it up to 4 hours

[09:17] because of my credit card was melting. But here's the end result. It's so cool. Oh, and I also had it published to a VPS. I just gave it my VPS login, and it took care of it for me. And look at this. It added some more games for me.

[09:30] It created Exit 8. I told it to do this, actually. We're in Japan. We love the game Exit 8. I wanted to create an 8-bit version of it. that amazing? If you want to play, I'll have links in the description. But, it

[09:43] just kind of did that. And let me tell you, I took me an embarrassing amount of first attempt failed. Second attempt took me weeks with Gemini, and then I moved to Codex, and then I moved back to Claude. And it looked okay, but it took

[09:55] tools, and getting it just right. Whereas, Perplexity AI computer just was kind of here already, and it just did it. That's cool. And it wasn't just too. I built Combini Quest. I built a viral content radar. I built a new

[10:09] gamified way to consume news. These kind of ideas just started pouring out of me I kind of had to sit down and think about it for a second. I'm like, is Perplexity AI computer really this amazing that Oh my gosh, is it all Is

[10:22] the hype real? Yes and no. What Perplexity AI computer did isn't that it's the only tool that can do this. It's that it like again put for a moment to really think about it. Why didn't I have all these ideas just

[10:35] tools? And I kind of alluded to this before, it's because I spent all of my before, it's because I spent all of my idea energy on creating those tools, Perplexity AI computer, there was no axe to sharpen. It just was already there,

[10:48] sharp, whole set of tools. All that was left for me was to just be the idea person, to tell it what to do. So, my ideas just kind of started flowing. So, >> How do I stop tweaking my tools cuz I can't stop? I have a problem. Now, I

[11:04] mentioned a cult earlier. I legit found a cult in Japan by accident. And this thing, Perplexity AI computer, helped me figure out everything about it. And I AI computer from any other tooling that does similar things. So, here's the

[11:17] the street. We walk past this deli called the Yellow Deli. Great food, locations all over the world. And I got curious about how it started because there's only one location in Japan, a bunch in the US. Why Japan? It seems

[11:30] really random. I did a simple search in Perplexity and dude, it's a cult. And I want to learn about the Kyoto location. Like, what is this? Who runs this? How much. So, sitting there in that deli, I'm like, "Hmm,

[11:43] better job than just the basic Perplexity search. I'm just curious. pulled it up on my phone. And here is my prompt. And I wanted a dashboard corkboard style investigation inspired. I wanted it to feel cool. Dude, it did

[11:57] it. You want to see it? I'm not sure I'm going to publish this because >> [laughter] >> And I don't want anything to happen to me. It's called the Yellow Deli Files. And this is a pretty sick website. And

[12:10] it told me things about the Kyoto branch that I just couldn't figure out with Perplexity. Like, where their commune is, how it got here from Australia, the people who started it. It is so crazy how well it did. The cost, let me see

[12:22] how much it cost me. 1,700 credits, took about 27 minutes. That's crazy though. to research for me and it gave me this amazing result. Okay, time to get a bit been like, "Oh, look at this. Oh, look at that."

[12:35] But let's get critical. Let's get real. This thing is expensive. And before I including my kids, let me show you how much it cost me. And full disclosure, Perplexity did give me a ton of credits to play with. Let me

[12:49] show you my usage. The plan credits come with 10,000. That's the $200 a month burn through that real quick if you're having fun like me. They gave me 35,000 bonus credits to play with. And then I couldn't stop and I paid for additional

[13:02] couldn't stop and I paid for additional 37,500 credits. So, roughly 82,500 that, how much all this stuff cost me. Like, that's a lot. And I think where I don't know how they're going to do this and figure it out. You know,

[13:16] they're paying API prices for the models that we're using. They're paying Opus 4.6 prices and Gemini. And then they're passing those costs along to us. So, They're doing some amazing stuff. The harness and the orchestrations really

[13:30] incredible, but they are a middleman. If you're new to this world, when you pay API prices, it's pay as you go and it's higher. If you pay for the plan, you get breakdown on the description below. And these providers, they want you to come

[13:43] and use their stuff. They want to lock you into their ecosystem, which is why Perplexity computer is so awesome. They are model agnostic, they get a better deal at the enterprise level cuz they're paying for so much,

[13:56] ever be able to compete with that. I hope they do because this genuinely is an amazing product, but that's the one thing that keeps me from using this all the time. Because look at what else I built. Look at this. I'm going to breeze

[14:10] to bore you too much, but Kombini Quest. I'm in Japan. I want to know how to talk to people at Kombinis, 7-Elevens, Lawsons, things like that. This is one of the ones I let auto run and just develop features.

[14:29] It's pretty fun. I did a gamified IT news website, which was okay. It's supposed to make every news thing worth learning about into a game that you work

[14:41] through. It's actually kind of cool. Oh, and you battle stuff. dashboard. This is actually a pretty sick website. I might publish this one. All right, show me what you got. So, it's this rice cooking game. Rice

[14:57] you say in the prompt? So, I created a new game where this character cooks rice dishes and the player gets to eat the food after it's prepared. You're doing

[15:10] for a long time. It's It's called Kome Kitchen? Kome Kitchen. Dude, it's like Roblox. It looks so what I built here I'm going to try and have published and accessible for you to

[15:25] play with right now. But again, the thing I I was most surprised about with like the super amazing software, which it really is cool. It's that it revealed >> It's that I need to stop playing with the AI tools

[15:40] and start using them. And I'm not really sure how to start doing that yet, tools better. And apps like Perplexity Computer help me to stay focused on the ideas, but I'm probably not going to use something like that. It's not for me.

[15:53] who's not going to be obsessed with the tooling, who's not who doesn't have an IT and tinker background, um they'll love it. I'm excited to see where they go with it. I just really really hope they get the price down.

[16:06] for them, cuz I do love Perplexity. Anyways, that's all I got, guys. I'll Hey, you made it to the end of the video. If you're new here, I'd like to pray for you, my audience.

[16:18] I know it's weird, some YouTube guy, bearded dude, praying for you. it, cuz I do believe in the power of prayer and how it can change your life. And I genuinely care about you. So, let's pray.

[16:32] the other side of the screen, this phone, this camera. Uh I thank you that they are passionate about tech, about technology. you remove any anxiety with AI, that you would give them a path forward with

[16:47] their lives. Bless their families. If there's right now that's um if there's tension, if there's any kind of

[16:59] conflict that's not being resolved, Lord, I pray that you just bring a resolution there. Let them not go to bed angry. bed angry. Bless them in that right right now, God.

[17:14] bless of as a whole. just help us to trudge forward with tenacity, with ferocity in this crazy AI world. And let's come out on top. Let's value people and be excited and relentless

[17:27] people and be excited and relentless relentlessly optimistic. everything. It's in your name we pray. Amen. All right, guys. Yeah, don't forget to be relentlessly optimistic, my new phrase of the year.

[17:40] optimistic, my new phrase of the year. I'll catch you guys next time.