Aravind Srinivas, CEO of AI search company Perplexity, has stepped across the picket line and offered his services to help cushion the impact of the tech workers' strike at the New York Times.
The NYT Tech Guild announced the strike on Monday, after setting a Nov. 4 deadline months ago. The employees represented will provide software support and data analysis to The Times on the business side of the dealership. They are asking for, among other things, a 2.5% annual wage increase and firming up the current two-day work week expectation.
“However, the company has determined that our members are not worthy enough to agree to a fair contract and cease unfair labor practices,” the guild wrote about X.
“They left us with no choice but to demonstrate our workforce on the picket lines,” Kathy Chan, the group's department chair, said in a statement.
NYT publisher AG Sulzberger criticized the strike, which took place two days before the US presidential election, saying in a statement: “Hundreds of millions of people depend on Times journalism on Election Day and beyond, and the tech unions' actions are worrying.” They seek to block this public service at a critical moment for our country. Dew. ”
As negotiations continued, picketers demonstrated in front of the NYT building in New York. Meanwhile, at X, formerly known as Twitter, Perplexity's CEO offered to fill in for striking workers.
Replying to Semafor media editor Max Tani quoting the publisher, Srinivas wrote: Perplexity is standing by to make sure everyone gets the coverage that matters during the election. Please DM me here anytime. ”
Many in X were quick to accuse Srinivas of acting as a scab (a derogatory term for people willing to do the work of striking workers). This is widely considered to be disreputable practice in labor and equity matters. By weakening collective action, scabs limit workers' ability to bargain with those in positions of power.
Mr. Srinivas may simply be trying to make sure people have the information they need on election day. The company recently announced its own election information hub and maps. But explicitly offering that service in place of striking workers was bound to be an unpopular move.
TechCrunch reached out to Perplexity for comment, but Srinivas wrote in a post on TechCrunch's It was something,” he replied. But the striking workers in question are those who provide their services to the NYT. It is not really clear what services other than the AI tool Perplexity can provide and why they cannot replace the workers in question. (However, given this clarification, we have decided to change the headline to reflect the claim that this offer is not necessarily specific to AI services.)
The NYT and Perplexity don't necessarily have a good relationship at the moment. In October, the Times sent a cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity over the company's scraping of articles for use in its AI models. In a conversation with TechCrunch last week, the normally outspoken CEO declined to define “plagiarism.”