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.
Damn didn’t know about this lite version, thanks, also gonna change it into it.
omfg you don’t say
THE AI by default marketing is failing? Shocker
Blatantly misleading title. Makes it sounds like it encompassed more than just search engines.
Couple months ago, I learned that duckduckgo has settings about disabling AI content. Settings>AI features.
Easy as that.Not as easy if you auto-delete your cookies on the closing of your browser.
On duckduckgo.com it’s unfortunately enabled by default though. You have to go out of your way to set your search browser to noai.duckduckgo.com if you want default AI disabled (which you’ll want on e.g. private browsing windows/any browser that autodeletes cookies when you close it). It’s extra hassle because most privacy web browsers use DDG by default, not the noai subdomain.
Said poll.
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
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.
I wish they would have talked about how many teees you need to offset an ecosia AI search
At this point, not having AI would be a selling point.
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.
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?
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.
So you make noai the default, yes?
I think it’s more like NOOOO.
I checked mine and it was off, I didn’t need to do anything.
Meanwhile, at HQ: “The userbase hallucinated that they don’t want AI. Maybe we prompted them wrong?”
The prompt was bad: there was no option to vote for “a little bit of AI as a tool is not bad but don’t force feed it to me”.
I think there were many people who voted for “no AI” who would’ve voted for “a little bit of ai” if they had the option.
There were probably also people who voted for “yes AI” who would have voted for “a little bit of ai when I explicitly ask for it” if they had the option.
Guess I’m in the 10%
You want to destroy our planet and pay way more in electricity for a random sentence generator to spit out slop?
Onward the Butlerian Jihad!
90%? Could be selection bias. I think, the result would be a different one if users would have been asked to in the Google AI tab.
You need to fetch users from different places for your sample to get more meaningful results.
Wasn’t this a poll to determine how DDG will use AI in the future? I don’t believe it was meant to be representative of the general population.
determine how DDG will use AI in the future?
In this regard it makes perfect sense. I guess it was just me who asked for the general population answer.
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.
And how much of their budget are they blowing on AI features despite polls showing their regular users don’t even want it? Probably also 90%.
Yeah. I’m actually kind of upset that I have to type ‘noai’. That should be the standard.
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.
I hope they learn their lesson from their own poll.
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.
… the fact DDG is not doing AI.
They are, unless you opt out.
exactly.
I still get a hunch 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).
Here’s a link to the Disable AI firefox plugin. Works on mobile and desktop.
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.
