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DuckDuckGo makes its 'no-AI' search engine easier to access as its traffic booms

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Re: DuckDuckGo makes its 'no-AI' search engine easier to access as its traffic booms

#61

Post by john_strinlai »

cassianoleal wrote: post #46
john_strinlai wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

chatgpt alone had like ~900 million weekly active users last i checked. thats a lot of c-suites (or the anti-ai crowd is more vocal than the occasional chatgpt user)

A lot of people who are fed up with AI use ChatGPT. Being fed up with something doesn't necessarily mean they start pretending it doesn't exist. Furthermore, where did that number come from? What does "active" mean? What does "user" mean?

>Furthermore, where did that number come from? What does "active" mean? What does "user" mean?

https://openai.com/index/scaling-ai-for-everyone/

weekly and monthly active users are common industry terms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_users

Re: DuckDuckGo makes its 'no-AI' search engine easier to access as its traffic booms

#62

Post by ai_fry_ur_brain »

Fogest wrote: post #10

To be honest, I didn't find DuckDuckGo's AI on the top of their search to be very good anyway compared to the one Google has. However can't say I have cared much as typically if I am searching I don't want an AI response, otherwise I'd just go straight to an AI chat interface in the first place.

The Google one is personalized to use language and sources that you'd prefer. They're building an individual response for each person that is most suited to trick that person into clicking on their ads. For some people they dont care, but I myself dont want a digital clone of me tricking me into buying things.

Salesman have for a long time teaching new salesman to use NLP tricks like matching and mirroring to convince people you're relatable and trustworthy. Google is doing this with all the data they have on you.

Re: DuckDuckGo makes its 'no-AI' search engine easier to access as its traffic booms

#63

Post by hparadiz »

elzbardico wrote: post #42
miyoji wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, don't forget about all the programmers who are excited to help destroy their own livelihoods for no extra compensation.

I think that a lot of those overly enthusiastic engineer AI fanboys are just playing a rational game driven by their perception that AI is a effective substitute for them, and that the only way to survive the comming culling is by being seen on the market as something an AI thought leader. Basically, signalling that they are going to be cooperative subjects for the enemy's occupation of the land. "I, for one, welcome…

I like how everyone on HN feels entitled to a profession that hasn't even existed for 100 years and that is constantly changing. Talk about addiction.

Re: DuckDuckGo makes its 'no-AI' search engine easier to access as its traffic booms

#65

Post by bradley13 »

You have to ask: Why is Google pushing the AI results? You would think that this would impact their ad revenue. Since Google is fundamentally an ad company, this deserves a closer look.

My suspicion - for which I have no proof - is this: With search results, Google marks the ads. The marking has gotten ever more subtle over the years, but it's there. If you want to avoid clicking on ads, you can. With AI, Google wants to integrate ads seamlessly into the results. If you search for widgets, and Acme Corp. has paid Google enough, the AI summary will praise the virtues of Acme's widgets. And the user will have no idea that this is paid placement, instead of a summary of product reviews, etc..

Re: DuckDuckGo makes its 'no-AI' search engine easier to access as its traffic booms

#66

Post by Valodim »

emaccumber wrote: post #56

I switched to DDG search three months ago, and unfortunately it's much inferior to Google. Maybe I've subconsciously optimized my queries for Google these past 20 years and need to rethink how to query using DDG, though.

Try kagi :)

Re: DuckDuckGo makes its 'no-AI' search engine easier to access as its traffic booms

#68

Post by mmastrac »

I've weirdly found that I like the Google AI mode in specific cases, and I find that the hybrid is the worst of the two worlds. There are some cases where I don't know exactly what I'm looking for and I want the AI to curate results. In other cases, I know what I'm looking for and I want to read the OG source.

The AI popup is the worst and will hallucinate answers from Reddit comments. I specifically had it ask me a nonsense question which was literally just someone's Reddit comment suggesting a follow-on topic B to the search topic A. The AI mode will _sometimes_ be useful enough to prompt into doing the search and summarization for me and get me just enough info and some links to continue the work myself.

Re: DuckDuckGo makes its 'no-AI' search engine easier to access as its traffic booms

#69

Post by sigmar »

cassianoleal wrote: post #12
jerf wrote: post #7

"Wait, we're getting an influx of new users, and they actively don't want us to run the most expensive part of our search results page?" Where can I find such accommodating customers myself?

Pretty much everywhere. AI is only popular with AI providers and delusional C-suites.

Seems like AI is the Ozempic of tech. IE token generation keeps soaring, yet if you ask any individual- many swear they aren't touching it.

Re: DuckDuckGo makes its 'no-AI' search engine easier to access as its traffic booms

#70

Post by anonymouscaller »

ghost_pepper wrote: post #9

Anyone with experience know how DuckDuckGo compares to Kagi in terms of quality of search results?

I find DDG results to be lower quality than Kagi, have never liked Bing's index. I also frequently use the personalized site rankings feature in Kagi to strip out known junky sites
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