If someone had asked me a year ago what might be the next big innovation to come out of the major AI companies, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have said, “a browser.”
But that’s exactly what both OpenAI and Perplexity did, each launching their own shiny new AI-enabled browsers, Atlas and Comet, respectively.
If you read the PR comms or watch the launch demos, both companies frame their new browsers as the first step towards completely reshaping how regular consumers use the internet. In OpenAI’s livestream to launch Atlas, Sam Altman said that “AI represents a rare once-a-decade opportunity to rethink what a browser can be about.”
Over on Substack, OpenAI’s CEO of Applications, Fidji Simo, wrote about Atlas and ChatGPT “evolving to become the operating system for your life.”
Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas has used similar language, describing Comet as a “cognitive operating system,” while Jesse Dwyer, who worked on Comet, is widely quoted referring to the browser as the “operating system of your mind.”
This all sounds extremely transformative. But I just don’t see it. At least not yet.
While these phrases might have polled well in focus groups, they’re effectively meaningless. A browser is not an operating system in exactly the same way ChatGPT or Perplexity aren’t.
Chrome, Edge, and Safari are each tied into a huge suite of digital products and tools centered around a different operating system. While it’s true that anyone can install and use any of these browsers, it’s that deep integration with a comprehensive suite of proprietary tools that creates ecosystems and builds workflows.
Could it be that, in their mad scramble to find sustainable monetization models, OpenAI and Perplexity have both fallen victim to survivorship bias?
What Tech Companies Can Learn From World War II Bombers
During World War II, the U.S. military tasked the Statistical Research Group at Columbia University with solving a pressing problem: too many American bombers weren’t returning from missions over Europe. Examinations of the aircraft that did make it back revealed patterns in the damage, with bullet holes heavily concentrated on the fuselage and wings. The obvious conclusion appeared to be to reinforce those heavily damaged areas.
But mathematician Abraham Wald saw the problem differently. He realized the military was only looking at planes that survived. No matter how shot up a plane might be, it could only make it back to base if none of those hits were critical. What about the planes that didn’t come back?
Far from exposing weaknesses to be reinforced, the bullet holes revealed where damage was survivable. They certainly did not reveal which areas were decisive in determining a bomber’s success or survival.
This is possibly the most famous example of survivorship bias: where we mistakenly focus on the common traits of those that succeeded (or survived) while ignoring the many others that failed, leading to false…
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