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DuckDuckGo Launches DuckAssist

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11–20 of 77 posts

Re: DuckDuckGo Launches DuckAssist

#11
post #2

no sign-up required! Yeah, you just need to install their native software on your system. Having to make an account is annoying. Having to install native software is a no-go for me.

So no dropbox, no firefox/chrome, no thunderbird, no whatsapp client, no telegram client, not git ?

Those programs are all doing work on your computer. Therefore you install them on your computer.

The only reason to deny access to a website for other browsers is to get your own native software on the machine of the user.

If Google would deny access to a Google website with browsers other than Chrome, everybody would be mad at them.

There are a lot of angry posts about Googles websites being less optimized for Firefox than for Chrome.

Outright banning alternative browsers is what is happening here.

Re: DuckDuckGo Launches DuckAssist

#12

At least here, they are specifically training it on just educational public sources. Seems like a respectable usage of the tech.

What do you mean "at least here"? What's wrong with other usage? They are using OpenAI so they haven't trained it themselves and is just inputting the Wikipedia article as a prompt. I don't see how that is more respectable than literally every other service built on OpenAI.

Re: DuckDuckGo Launches DuckAssist

#14
I asked it "what is a memory model in computer science" to see how it handles something slightly obscure. Its answer:

> The multi-store model (also known as Atkinson–Shiffrin memory model) is a memory model in computer science that describes the interactions of threads through memory and their shared use of the data. It allows a compiler to perform many important optimizations.

> More info in the History and significance section of the Memory model (programming) Wikipedia article.

It seems to think that the Atkinson–Shiffrin memory model is somehow related to computer science, which it is not. It's a model of human memory. And that article it references does not once mention the Atkinson–Shiffrin memory model. At least it's easy to verify.

Re: DuckDuckGo Launches DuckAssist

#16
post #6

So, AI continues to infect more things I use. That's unfortunate.

It seems like it's meant to be an extra feature and not a replacement for search. This is a good thing and will help DDG reduce dependence on Bing. Of course, maybe dependence on Wikipedia is not so good if you care about accuracy.

Trading 1 Microsoft dependency for another one since they're relying on OpenAI which is now 49% Microsoft owned.

Re: DuckDuckGo Launches DuckAssist

#18
> by asking DuckAssist to only summarize information from Wikipedia and related sources, the probability that it will “hallucinate” — that is, just make something up — is greatly diminished

This cannot be asserted and dismissed so easily.

I would not be surprised if it returns content that it thinks would have or should have been in Wikipedia.

The more you constrain it (e.g., "only answer truthfully") the more it bristles and tends to react in the opposite way, because it can't actually do that.

Re: DuckDuckGo Launches DuckAssist

#20
post #2

no sign-up required! Yeah, you just need to install their native software on your system. Having to make an account is annoying. Having to install native software is a no-go for me.

So no dropbox, no firefox/chrome, no thunderbird, no whatsapp client, no telegram client, not git ?

Maybe you meant to illustrate how absurd such a stance would be, but in reality 5 of the 7 things you mention are an absolute non-starter for me.
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