Sentient, the decentralized AI firm backed by Peter Thiel, is launching Open Deep Search (ODS), an AI model designed to be community-owned. This initiative aims to foster greater decentralization within the AI landscape.
Sentient’s flagship model, Dobby, is part of the company’s focus on building “loyal” AI models. According to a press release, Sentient outperformed Perplexity’s Sonar Reasoning Pro and GPT-4o Search Preview in accuracy when tested against the FRAMES benchmark.
Sentient aims to increase AI accessibility through decentralization. CEO Tyagi expressed strong optimism about the convergence of AI and crypto.
Tyagi stated that open-sourcing a framework exceeding the performance of Perplexity challenges closed-source AI developers. He added that it provides developers access to a fundamental tool that allows them to create new applications.
Decentralization is crucial because of the potential data limitations of centralized entities.
Tyagi emphasized the importance of decentralizing data sources to address this issue.
While some have drawn comparisons between Sentient and Perplexity, Tyagi dismissed these comparisons, stating that Sentient lacks a direct competitor. He clarified that the team is primarily focused on model development.
Currently, Sentient Chat has a waitlist of almost two million users. Its loyal AI model, Dobby, has roughly 700,000 users.