DuckDuckGo's latest product is a pair of ordinary sunglasses, with no added features such as video recording or generative AI integration. Part marketing campaign and part wearable...
AI is the future of search and I dont see anyway that changes. The user experience of AI search is way to good, average users love the summary at the top of their search. Almost every report i’ve seen shows over 50% of people using AI for search and that tracks with what I see in people i know in real life.
I’m a DDG user and I do not want them to handicap themselves to pass a purity test.
Its a generalized product targeting average people. Average people dont care AI/No AI they want the results and they use the AI summaries. If DDG hid it then they would just think it doesnt exist and go use google which provides them faster more convenient results.
Thought terminating cliches are the future of online discourse.
The user experience of AI search is way to good
Search engine companies went out of their way to make normal searches worse, and then introduced AI search to keep you on their sites.
I thought everybody at this point understood enshittification at this point, but if not: of course a project at the first stage of enshittification acts better than a different product at the third stage of it.
Its not a thought terminating cliche if you didnt cut the next word out. You can argue if AI is the future of search, I think there is a strong case that its proven very good at general information retrieval.
How did search engine companies go out of their way to make normal searches worse? I search I get relevant results and its been that way for the past 20 years. Nothing has changed that has made search worse than it was 5 years ago. The only change is that people have recently gotten a choice between a google search or a chatgpt question and they were increasingly choosing chatgpt. fast forward to current day and that divide has only increased.
Personally I actually like the A.I. summaries… IF it shows its sources. That way it essentially acts as it should, a summary of the search results, and I can click the link that actually is relevant to what I wanted to find in the first place. It skips that step where you have to open the first 5 links and comb through them to find which one is the useful one.
I know most people don’t click those links and just trust the summary directly, but it’s important to me personally. Unfortunately those links only appear sometimes, often you just get plain text with no links.
Its wrong though. Its wrong so fucking often. There’s no way to fix that. I stopped using ddg because of this. Pandering to right wing idiots does not necessarily mean being smart, that’s thatcherite Nazi coddling lies.
DuckDuckGo enjoys default search engine status on a lot of browsers, and many of them make it difficult to set a custom one. Especially mobile browsers, and apparently even Safari makes it a pain.
If enough people were that bothered about a box with an AI overview, it wouldn’t be there. Simple as that. The thing is that the overview turns out to be helpful in some cases, despite what the haters think.
Recently, my mom killed one of her plants, because she searched for something to use as organic fertilizer and the ai summary suggested to add coffee grounds mixed with water daily. She realized it was a fake information and isn’t trusting anything from internet searchers anymore. I wonder if at some point it will happen to most non-tech people, and search usage will go down heavily.
Ok, if people hate AI so much, you’ll see it being gone soon. No company would want to spend money keeping an useless feature, principally DDG, which is no monopoly.
Also, that poll is about Americans, I don’t give a shit what Americans think.
if people hate AI so much, you’ll see it being gone soon
That’s not how capitalism works. If you genuinely believe in the Invisible Hand Of The Market, you shouldn’t.
And you should know better: just days ago , you were telling people capitalism, not AI, was the real villain, which makes your tone here come across as trollish.
DuckDuckGo has taken a clear stance on generative AI and other LLM-based tools, having asked users whether they wanted AI results fully integrated into search. An overwhelming majority said no, which is why the company now keeps AI content and interactions confined to a separate page.
DuckDuckGo should apply this lesson to their search engine!
https://kagi.com/
I know its not DDG but default behavior is no AI overview (which you can still ger by explicitly asking for it if that’s what you need).
https://noai.duckduckgo.com/
I maintain that this should be the default behavior and the AI be opt-in
AI is the future of search and I dont see anyway that changes. The user experience of AI search is way to good, average users love the summary at the top of their search. Almost every report i’ve seen shows over 50% of people using AI for search and that tracks with what I see in people i know in real life.
I’m a DDG user and I do not want them to handicap themselves to pass a purity test.
Ai search results are ass
Then opt in. We shouldn’t have to opt out to avoid padding the AI numbers.
Its a generalized product targeting average people. Average people dont care AI/No AI they want the results and they use the AI summaries. If DDG hid it then they would just think it doesnt exist and go use google which provides them faster more convenient results.
Thought terminating cliches are the future of online discourse.
Search engine companies went out of their way to make normal searches worse, and then introduced AI search to keep you on their sites.
I thought everybody at this point understood enshittification at this point, but if not: of course a project at the first stage of enshittification acts better than a different product at the third stage of it.
Its not a thought terminating cliche if you didnt cut the next word out. You can argue if AI is the future of search, I think there is a strong case that its proven very good at general information retrieval.
How did search engine companies go out of their way to make normal searches worse? I search I get relevant results and its been that way for the past 20 years. Nothing has changed that has made search worse than it was 5 years ago. The only change is that people have recently gotten a choice between a google search or a chatgpt question and they were increasingly choosing chatgpt. fast forward to current day and that divide has only increased.
Personally I actually like the A.I. summaries… IF it shows its sources. That way it essentially acts as it should, a summary of the search results, and I can click the link that actually is relevant to what I wanted to find in the first place. It skips that step where you have to open the first 5 links and comb through them to find which one is the useful one.
I know most people don’t click those links and just trust the summary directly, but it’s important to me personally. Unfortunately those links only appear sometimes, often you just get plain text with no links.
On DDG you get the sources its summarizing from. Im not sure about google, i dont use it.
Its wrong though. Its wrong so fucking often. There’s no way to fix that. I stopped using ddg because of this. Pandering to right wing idiots does not necessarily mean being smart, that’s thatcherite Nazi coddling lies.
Folks can configure this as their homepage, search engine, etc.
Exactly my thoughts.
DuckDuckGo enjoys default search engine status on a lot of browsers, and many of them make it difficult to set a custom one. Especially mobile browsers, and apparently even Safari makes it a pain.
Settings > Search > Search Engine > DuckDuckGo
I’d say most people don’t really care
Most people are idiots.
As mostly a person I’m offended!
This comment is unnecessarily dismissive and unhelpful.
If people don’t care, then they won’t care if it’s gone either. And that’s the better option.
If enough people were that bothered about a box with an AI overview, it wouldn’t be there. Simple as that. The thing is that the overview turns out to be helpful in some cases, despite what the haters think.
Recently, my mom killed one of her plants, because she searched for something to use as organic fertilizer and the ai summary suggested to add coffee grounds mixed with water daily. She realized it was a fake information and isn’t trusting anything from internet searchers anymore. I wonder if at some point it will happen to most non-tech people, and search usage will go down heavily.
Coffee grounds can be helpful to add to fertilizer, but you need more than just coffee grounds: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11241280/
No, the act of a company shoving something bad down people’s throats does not prove it’s what they wanted. You should know this.
We have polls that have calculated people’s sentiment. They are sick of AI .
Ok, if people hate AI so much, you’ll see it being gone soon. No company would want to spend money keeping an useless feature, principally DDG, which is no monopoly.
Also, that poll is about Americans, I don’t give a shit what Americans think.
That’s not how capitalism works. If you genuinely believe in the Invisible Hand Of The Market, you shouldn’t.
And you should know better: just days ago , you were telling people capitalism, not AI, was the real villain, which makes your tone here come across as trollish.
wrong.
lol
here’s two links to give you an idea where the AI shit is going:
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/google-data-center-fort-wayne-indiana-wetlands
https://www.404media.co/city-that-arrested-person-for-clapping-at-data-center-meeting-moves-to-virtual-townhalls-for-public-safety/
This is what I get when I run a DuckDuckGo search in a private window. Sure doesn’t look separate to me.