anyone under 74 use DuckDuckGo?
The other 10% are bots
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?
Oh, I meet you again. I haven’t logged in for a long time 😅
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:
Most people wanting AI probably don’t use DDG though. Else they would use Brave Search I guess
I haven’t seen the poll though
Now can we have a poll from Dr. Thunder about what we went our Cola to taste like?
How many people want Bing results as well?Coll stick to Searx
Bing gets shat on too much. I used it for a while a couple years ago and other than the usual microslop shadyness it was a completely fine search engine and the search results were fine.
I guess they haven’t asked me or it’d be 91%
You’ve been learning statistics from an LLM, haven’t you?
deleted by creator
This guy knows the SHIT out of statistics!
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?
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.
Definitely agree, there should have been some punitive damages for making them go through that while they were mourning.
…what kind of brain damage did the rep have to think that was a viable defense? surely their human customer service personnel are also responsible for their own actions?
It makes sense to do it, it’s just along the lines of evil company.
If they lose, it’s some bad press and people will forget.
If they win, they’ve begun setting precedent to fuck over their customers and earn more money. Even if it only had a 5% chance of success, it was probably worth it.
sure but there was no way that wouldn’t have been thrown out.
But the shareholders… /s
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.
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’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.
It’s really good at answering customer questions for me, to be honest.
But, I still have to okay it. Just in case. There’s no trust.
However that still does take a lot less bandwidth for me because I’m not good at the customer facing aspects of my business.
I still would, as the increased productivity, once again, does not lead to reduced hours. Always more productive, always locked into a bullshit schedule.
AI is not impressive or worth all the trade offs and worse quality of life. It is decent in some areas but mostly grifter tech.
It IS an impressive tech
Google became crap ever since they added AI. Microsoft became crap ever since they added AI. OpenAI started losing money the moment they started working on AI. Coincidence? I think not!
Rational people don’t want Abominable Intelligence anywhere near them.
Personally, I don’t mind the AI overviews, but they shouldn’t show up every time you do a search. That’s just a waste of energy.
You can choose how often you want the AI Overwiew to appear! It like asks you the first time you get one in a small pop up. I still think they should instead work on “highlighting relevant text from a website” like how google used to do. It was so much better.
Google became crap about 10 years ago when they added the product banner in the top, and had the first 5-10 search results be promoted ads. Long before they ever considered adding AI.
Google became crap shortly after their company name became a synonym for online searches. When you don’t have competitors, you don’t have to work as hard to provide search results – especially if you’re actively paying Apple not to come up with their own search engine, Firefox to maintain Google as their default search engine, etc. IMO AI has been the shiny new thing they’re interested in as they continue to neglect search quality, but it wasn’t responsible for the decline of search quality.
Time is sneaking up on us. It’s not even 10 years anymore. It’s closer to 20. 💀
I guess. And then they removed the “Don’t be evil” motto just to drive the point home.
But you have to agree, the company DID become even worse once they started using AI.
Oh absolutely. It’s just important to remember that they’ve been horrible for a long time, and has shown more ads in a single search than your average 30 minute youtube video.
Google and Microsoft were crap before AI, I don’t remember when google removed the “don’t be evil” but at that point they have been crap for a few years already.
- They got rid of that motto in 2018. And you could theoretically argue that Google was getting worse since its conception in 1998.
Yeah google kinda started sucking a few years before AI went mainstream, the search results took a dive in quality and garbage had already started circulating to the top.
I don’t mind the AI overviews, but they shouldn’t show up every time you do a search.
I mind them. Nobody at my workplace scrolls beyond the AI overview and every single one of the overviews they quote to me about technical issues are wrong, 100%. Not even an occasional “lucky guess”.
Good for you. I Meant as a design choice for a search engine. Why waste electricity?
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.
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
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
Climate intelligence. Gods, excuse me while I go fetch my skeleton that was ejected from my body due to the cringe.
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?
Investors who bought into the hype and the middle managers who are scared of being fired by them
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.
hot take: this comment gives me a idea for them a opt-in AI powered entirely by solar energy if we solve the ethics problem first ofc.
I don’t get this argument when literally everything else is hundreds of times worse like lifestock and cars. Removing either one today would dramatically change the environment.
Do you drive a car or take any kind of transportation?
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.
Yeah that reminds me of the data centres hogging green energy that was meant for households
That’s actually a very good point, thanks!
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 ^^"
Do you believe them? Why?
Infomaniak?
Yes. :)
I’m just happy they give the option to turn off the ai overview as a setting.
Yeah, luckily it’s very easy to turn off.
Don’t build AI into everything and assume you know how your users want to use it. If they do want to use AI, give me an MCP server to interact with your service instead and let users build out their own tooling.
