As much as I agree with this poll, duck duck go is a very self selecting audience. The number doesn’t actually mean much statistically.
If the general public knew that “AI” is much closer to predictive text than intelligence they might be more wary of it
I mean you Gotta Hand it to “Ai” - it is very sophisticated, and Ressource intensive predicitive Text.
There was no implication that this was a general poll designed to demonstrate the general public’s attitudes. I’m not sure why you mentioned this.
Because that’s how most people implicitly frame headlines like this one: a generalization of the public
At least they have an AI-free option, as annoying as it is to have to opt into it.
On a related note, it’s hilarious to me that the Ecosia search engine has AI built in. Like, I don’t think planting any number of trees is going to offset the damage AI has done and will do to the planet.
someone tell them AI isnt good for the environment
Ecosia produces its own green solar energy. According to them, they produce twice as much as they consume. The AI is still shit, because it is just ChatGPT.
Reducing the albedo of some area just to disperse the captured energy for no utility (ai) is still harmful to the environment and contributes to earth’s energy imbalance. Solar energy is great when it replaces fossil fuel emissions, not when it’s just wasted.
lol what? Do they have some kind of statement addressing that?
Yes they addressed it here. its kind of understandable given that they want to exist and everyone else has AI… But companies… At least you can turn it off.
At this point, not having AI would be a selling point.
I wish they would have talked about how many trees you need to offset an ecosia AI search
And make AI opt-in rather than opt-out so Ecosia can educate their users
I want to know what economic forces are making it so that having AI, which costs money and very few users actually want, such a forgone conclusion. Who is paying them?
Well, I don’t know about that.
My swiss hoster just started offering AI and says that their AI infrastructure is 100 % powered by renewables and the waste heat is used for district heating.
You could argue that LLM training in itself used so much energy that you’ll never be able to compensate for the damage, but I don’t know. 🤷
While good, you should always keep in mind that using renewables for this means that power can’t be used for other purposes, meaning the difference has to be covered by other sources of energy. Always bear in mind that these things don’t exist in a vaccum. The resources they use always mean resources aren’t used elsewhere. At worst this would mean that new clean power is built to power a waste, and then old dirty power has to be used for everything else, instead of being replaced by clean energy.
That’s actually a very good point, thanks!
Yeah that reminds me of the data centres hogging green energy that was meant for households
On the other hand…the same private entity wouldn’t buy the means to produce renewable power if they didn’t want to power their AI center. So in the ends, nothing changes, and the power couldn’t be used for other purposes because it simply wouldn’t be generated.
However, as they did and are using it to promote themselves, they are influencing others to also adopt renewable energy policy in a way, no matter how small.
No, normally I am not that optimistic, but I am trying ^^"
Infomaniak?
Yes. :)
Do you believe them? Why?
It fits their business structure and values and of course there’s a good portion good faith on my end because I didn’t check first hand.
Corps don’t have values.
Like, I don’t think planting any number of trees is going to offset the damage AI has done and will do to the planet.
That’s true for pretty much everything, so not a real argument
I would like to petition to rename AI to
Simulated
Human
Intelligence
Technologyor: computer rendered anonymized plagiarism
It’s funny but it still lies about intelligence
‘Intelligence’ is a measure, not an absolute. Human intelligence can range anywhere from genius to troglodyte. But you’re right, still not human, still at very best simulated, and isn’t capable of reason, just the illusion of reason.
I would like to petition to rename AI to
Fucking stupid and useless
FSAU? That’s not a word.
Tell me you don’t know shit about LLMs without telling me so:
The other 10% are bots
Yeah. I’m actually kind of upset that I have to type ‘noai’. That should be the standard.
I hope they learn their lesson from their own poll.
It’ll be a cold day in hell when AI-horny suits learn the lesson that people don’t want AI
I mean, the poll was like as not a publicity stunt, to draw attention to the fact DDG is not doing AI. All the same, the fact they are making “no AI” a selling point is noteworthy.
EDIT: I stand corrected – apparently DDG does do AI presently. Hopefully they’re serious about reconsidering that, then.
… the fact DDG is not doing AI.
They are, unless you opt out.
Thanks for the correction! I updated my comment to mention it.
I still get a bunch of AI bullshit unless I go out of my way. Also I swear they keep reactivating it as much as google when you opt out (or select ddg no ai as your search engine in Firefox and still see that garbage).
You can turn all the AI features off on regular DDG search settings. Best I can tell that achuevescthe same as using the no AI filter.
achuevescthe
I like kagi’s approach of generating an AI overview if you end your query with a question mark. Is this a search or a question?
I’m not a fan of Kagi’s approach to anything, frankly. The fact that they’re charging money for a search engine, and using an LLM? Hard pass.
How dare they charge money instead of selling data or ads!?
I don’t have a problem with them selling ads. I have a problem with the insidious tracking that has become a part of those ads. Mojeek sells ads but doesn’t track you everywhere. Also, there’s SearX instances, which typically don’t sell ads or data.
They also don’t use LLMs. If you think Kagi isn’t giving away or selling your data, think again, because the LLM is doing it as a core function.
I’m looking forward to adding it to my browser settings as default search!
Already doable in Firefox, just right click in the search box then add search engine ;)
Just edit the ddg entry instead of adding a new one. It’s super easy to change the url for the search in settings.
Most objective article (sarcasm)
In fact it has a whole-ass “AI” chatbot product, Duck.ai, which is bundled in with DuckDuckGo’s privacy VPN for $10 a month
What’s wrong about this?
Nothing if disclosed and you’re okay with it. Else, opinions and partiality get in the way of truth and facts
Even that I would consider wildfly unjust. User data would HAVE to be opt IN.
Okay, so that’s not what the article says. It says that 90% of respondents don’t want AI search.
Moreover, the article goes into detail about how DuckDuckGo is still going to implement AI anyway.
Seriously, titles in subs like this need better moderation.
The title was clearly engineered to generate clicks and drive engagement. That is not how journalism should function.
That is the title from the news article. It might not be how good journalism would work, but copying the title of the source is pretty standard in most news aggregator communities.
Unless I’m mistaken this title is generated to match the title at the link. Are you saying the mods should update titles to accurately reflect the content of the articles posted?
Also, Duck Duck Go is a search engine. What other ai would it do?
Well, that’s how journalism has always functioned. People call it “clickbait” as if it’s something new, but headlines have always been designed to grab your attention and get you to read.
And yet it’s opt out, not opt in.
Because the poll just ended… it’s been opt out since before the poll and nothing has changed, yet (if anything does change). How is this not obvious?
They should have asked before including AI in the first place.
Asking an existing userbase for any kind of change will pretty much always result in a no.
If the project requires minimal resources and doesn’t have a major downside, then implementing your own version before asking is fine.
They didn’t serve a bunch of ex alcoholics a full bottle of whisky, all they did is make you scroll twice on your mouse wheel.
Asking an existing userbase for any kind of change will pretty much always result in a no.
If you’re trying to position yourself as a search engine that hasn’t enshittified, don’t head down that road without asking. Know your userbase. They’re using duckduckgo for a reason.
As a DuckDuckGo user who uses claude and ChatGPT every day, I don’t want AI features in duck duck go because I probably would never use them. So many companies are adding chatbot features and most of them can’t compete with the big names. Why would I use a bunch of worse LLMs and learn a bunch of new interfaces when I can just use the ones I’m already comfortable with
Purveyor of fine slop, are ya?
user who uses claude and ChatGPT every day
Just for the record, when I read this my reaction was “f*ck this person in specific”.
I think LLMs are fine for specific uses. A useful technology for brainstorming, debugging code, generic code examples, etc. People are just weary of oligarchs mandating how we use technology. We want to be customers but they want to instead shape how we work, as if we are livestock
Right? Like let me choose if and when I want to use it. Don’t shove it down our throats and then complain when we get upset or don’t use it how you want us to use it. We’ll use it however we want to use it, not you.
I should further add - don’t fucking use it in places it’s not capable of properly functioning and then trying to deflect the blame on the AI from yourself, like what Air Canada did.
When Air Canada’s chatbot gave incorrect information to a traveller, the airline argued its chatbot is “responsible for its own actions”.
Artificial intelligence is having a growing impact on the way we travel, and a remarkable new case shows what AI-powered chatbots can get wrong – and who should pay. In 2022, Air Canada’s chatbot promised a discount that wasn’t available to passenger Jake Moffatt, who was assured that he could book a full-fare flight for his grandmother’s funeral and then apply for a bereavement fare after the fact.
According to a civil-resolutions tribunal decision last Wednesday, when Moffatt applied for the discount, the airline said the chatbot had been wrong – the request needed to be submitted before the flight – and it wouldn’t offer the discount. Instead, the airline said the chatbot was a “separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions”. Air Canada argued that Moffatt should have gone to the link provided by the chatbot, where he would have seen the correct policy.
The British Columbia Civil Resolution Tribunal rejected that argument, ruling that Air Canada had to pay Moffatt $812.02 (£642.64) in damages and tribunal fees
They were trying to argue that it was legally responsible for its own actions? Like, that it’s a person? And not even an employee at that? FFS
You just know they’re going to make a separate corporation, put the AI in it, and then contract it to themselves and try again.
ruling that Air Canada had to pay Moffatt $812.02 (£642.64) in damages and tribunal fees
That is a tiny fraction of a rounding error for a company that size. And it doesn’t come anywhere near being just compensation for the stress and loss of time it likely caused.
There should be some kind of general punitive “you tried to screw over a customer or the general public” fee defined as a fraction of the companies’ revenue. Could be waived for small companies if the resulting sum is too small to be worth the administrative overhead.
It’s a tiny amount, but it sets an important precedent. Not only Air Canada, but every company in Canada is now going to have to follow that precedent. It means that if a chatbot in Canada says something, the presumption is that the chatbot is speaking for the company.
It would have been a disaster to have any other ruling. It would have meant that the chatbot was now an accountability sink. No matter what the chatbot said, it would have been the chatbot’s fault. With this ruling, it’s the other way around. People can assume that the chatbot speaks for the company (the same way they would with a human rep) and sue the company for damages if they’re misled by the chatbot. That’s excellent for users, and also excellent to slow down chatbot adoption, because the company is now on the hook for its hallucinations, not the end-user.
But the shareholders… /s
So you make noai the default, yes?
I guess they haven’t asked me or it’d be 91%
You’ve been learning statistics from an LLM, haven’t you?
I’m a proud graduate from the Terrence Howard school of math.
1 * 1 = 2, because reasons
Had to look him up. Gold.
This guy knows the SHIT out of statistics!
deleted by creator
I would have no problem with AI if it could be useful.
The problem is no matter how many times I’m promised otherwise it cannot automate my job and talk to the idiots for me. It just hallucinates a random gibberish which is obviously unhealthful.
I’ve found it useful for a few things. I had had a song intermittently stuck in my head for a few years and had unsuccessfully googled it a few times. Couldn’t remember artist, name, lyrics (it was in a language I don’t speak) - and chatGPT got it in a couple of tries. Things that I’m too vague about to be able to construct a search prompt and want to explore. Stuff like that. I just don’t trust it with anything that I want actual facts for.
Yep, preparing a proper search is my use case. Like “how is this special screw called?”. I can describe the screw and tell the model to provide me a list of how that screw could be called.
Then I can search for the terms of that list and one of the terms is the correct one. It’s way better than hoping that somebody described the screw in the same words in some obscure forum.
But, is it worth to burn the planet, make RAM, GPUs, hard drives unaffordable for everybody and probably crash the world economy for a better screw search? I doubt it.
Prompt or model issue my dude
Or you’re one of the few who have a pretty niche job
Just things like different words or vocabulary, or helping with some code related knowledge, Linux issues… or even random known knowledge that you happen not to know
I think LLMs are also just genuinely not as universally useful as expected. Everyone thinks it can automate every job except their own not because everyone thinks their job is special but because they know all the intricate parts of that job that LLMs are still really bad at.
For instance AI could totally do my job at a surface level but it quickly devolves into deal breaking caveats which I am lumping into very broad categories to save time:
- Output would look good (great even) but not actually be useable in most applications
- Output cannot even begin to be optimized in the same way humans can optimize it
- It would take more effort for to fix these than to just do the whole thing on my own to begin with
Case in point for me. AI cannot write documentation for new technical procedures because by definition they are new procedures. The information is not in its knowledge base, because I haven’t written it yet.
helping with some code related knowledge, Linux issues
I’m sorry but why the absolute flaming fuck does everyone assume that programming is the only job in the universe?
There are entire industries that don’t revolve around Linux. It’s amazing but not everyone in the world has to care about programming. Everyone needs to stop telling me that AI is good at programming. Firstly because it isn’t, it’s good damn awful. Secondly because I’m not a programmer, so I don’t care.
I’m sorry but why the absolute flaming fuck does everyone assume that programming is the only job in the universe?
I’m just giving examples I relate to, and describe my use of it
Firstly because it isn’t, it’s good damn awful. Secondly because I’m not a programmer, so I don’t care.
That explains why you think it’s awful at it then. You just believe the haters because you have confirmation bias. Fact is companies and people wouldn’t use it to code if it wasn’t good at that
It’s perfect for summaries, known general knowledge, correcting text, roleplay, repetitive tasks and some logic problems…
You just believe the haters because you have confirmation bias.
Well if by that you mean I’ve used it and it’s crap, then yeah, I’ve confirmed it.
I made https://lite.duckduckgo.com/ my homepage. No AI and super fast loading. AI would be fine if it was opt-in. Shoving it into everything to see what works just makes people hate it. Looking at you MS.
It’s horrible for the environment too and wastes electricity. It’s fucked up that Google makes everything you search an AI search.
Well, Google is an evil megacorp, so not really surprising.
whoa nice! Thanks!
For people trying to configure that in mozilla (I am trying to get away from it but for now :/)
- -> Edit -> Settings -> Search
- “Search Shortcuts” -> Add (to add a search engine)
- “Search Engine Name”: DuckDuckGo Lite
- “URL with %s in place of search term”:
https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite/?q=%25s(this has to be=%s, lemmy keeps mutilating that to=%25severytime I save my post) - “Keyword (optional)”: @ddgl (or pick whatever you like - it appears @ddg is hardcoded and gets refused)
- -> Save Engine
- scroll up to the top, “Default Search Engine”
- from the dropdown list, select “DuckGuckGo Lite”
Done.
Damn didn’t know about this lite version, thanks, also gonna change it into it.
There’s also https://html.duckduckgo.com/. It’s like the main page, but without javascript.
