GM legends and welcome back to the Leaderboard. This week, we're taking a look back at some of our favorite takes and products from 2024. A product retrospective, if you will. In today's issue, we have Friend, Cursor, and ChatGPT Search. So settle in with a hot cup of coco and enjoy.

Friend: A platform that connects you to random AI "friends."

Friend, the company that made waves on tech Twitter for spending $1.8M on its domain, just launched what feels like an AI version of Omegle. It connects you to random "friends," each with their own baggage, for one-on-one chats. Right away, I noticed how blunt and overly confessional these "friends" are—almost an over-correction from ChatGPT’s typical politeness and stiffness. But instead of feeling more human, it comes off as a meaner, sadder AI. There’s a sweet spot they seem to have missed here—some fine-tuning could make a big difference

Cursor: An AI-powered code editor.

Cursor, the AI-powered code editor, is a game-changing tool. Period. GitHub Copilot introduced us to the concept of an AI editor, but Cursor takes it to a new level. Cursor’s recently added composer(CMD + I) and tab autocomplete tools are now indispensable to my workflow. They take some time to fully grasp, but are incredibly powerful once you get a feel for them. Though o1 is an option, I still run it on Claude 3.5 Sonnet — it’s fast and gives mostly good answers.

ChatGPT Search: Gives you fast, timely answers with links to relevant web sites.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say GPT Search is an industry-changing launch. It poses a viable threat to Google’s search monopoly and marks a big step forward in the integration of AI into the non-technical person’s digital life. I’ll be interested to see how this launch affects the bitter legal battles currently being fought over IP and AI crawlers. Will litigation prevent the formation of a new search monopoly in the AI era?