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this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2025
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I was an early tester of Google's AI, since well before Bard. I told the person that gave me access that it was not a releasable product. Then they released Bard as a closed product (invite only), to which I was again testing and giving feedback since day one. I once again gave public feedback and private (to my Google friends) that Bard was absolute dog shit. Then they released it to the wild. It was dog shit. Then they renamed it. Still dog shit. Not a single of the issues I brought up years ago was ever addressed except one. I told them that a basic Google search provided better results than asking the bot (again, pre-Bard). They fixed that issue by breaking Google's search. Now I use Kagi.
I know Lemmy seems to very anti-AI (as am I) but we need to stop making the anti-AI talking point "AI is stupid". It has immense limitations now because yes, it is being crammed into things it shouldn't be, but we shouldn't just be saying "its dumb" because that's immediately written off by a sizable amount of the general population. For a lot of things, it is actually useful and it WILL be taking peoples jobs, like it or not (even if they're worse at it). Truth be told, this should be a utopic situation for obvious reasons
I feel like I'm going crazy here because the same people on here who'd criticise the DARE anti-drug program as being completely un-nuanced to the point of causing the harm they're trying to prevent are doing the same thing for AI and LLMs
My point is that if you're trying to convince anyone, just saying its stupid isn't going to turn anyone against AI because the minute it offers any genuine help (which it will!), they'll write you off like any DARE pupil who tried drugs for the first time.
Countries need to start implementing UBI NOW
It is funny that you mention this because it was after we started working with AI that I started telling one that would listen that we needed to implement UBI immediately. I think this was around 2014 IIRC.
I am not blanket calling AI stupid. That said, the AI term itself is stupid because it covers many computing aspects that aren't even in the same space. I was and still am very excited about image analysis as it can be an amazing tool for health imaging diagnosis. My comment was specifically about Google's Bard/Gemini. It is and has always been trash, but in an effort to stay relevant, it was released into the wild and crammed into everything. The tool can do some things very well, but not everything, and there's the rub. It is an alpha product at best that is being forced fed down people's throats.
Weird because I’ve used it many times fr things not related to coding and it has been great.
I told it the specific model of my UPS and it let me know in no uncertain terms that no, a plug adapter wasn’t good enough, that I needed an electrician to put in a special circuit or else it would be a fire hazard.
I asked it about some medical stuff, and it gave thoughtful answers along with disclaimers and a firm directive to speak with a qualified medical professional, which was always my intention. But I appreciated those thoughtful answers.
I use co-pilot for coding. It’s pretty good. Not perfect though. It can’t even generate a valid zip file (unless they’ve fixed it in the last two weeks) but it sure does try.
Beware of the confidently incorrect answers. Triple check your results with core sources (which defeats the purpose of the chatbot).
I remember there was an article years ago, before the ai hype train, that google had made an ai chatbot but had to shut it down due to racism.
Are you thinking of when Microsoft's AI turned into a Nazi within 24hrs upon contact with the internet? Or did Google have their own version of that too?
And now Grok, though that didn't even need Internet trolling, Nazi included in the box...
Yeah, it's a full-on design feature.
Yeah maybe it was Microsoft It's been quite a few years since it happened.
You're thinking of Tay, yeah.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(chatbot)
That was Microsoft's Tay - the twitter crowd had their fun with it: https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/24/11297050/tay-microsoft-chatbot-racist
Gemrni is dogshit, but it's objectively better than chatgpt right now.
They're ALL just fuckig awful. Every AI.
That's the thing about AI in general, it's really hard to "fix" issues, you maybe can try to train it out and hope for the best, but then you might play whack a mole as the attempt to fine tune to fix one issue might make others crop up. So you pretty much have to decide which problems are the most tolerable and largely accept them. You can apply alternative techniques to maybe catch egregious issues with strategies like a non-AI technique being applied to help stuff the prompt and influence the model to go a certain general direction (if it's LLM, other AI technologies don't have this option, but they aren't the ones getting crazy money right now anyway).
A traditional QA approach is frustratingly less applicable because you have to more often shrug and say "the attempt to fix it would be very expensive, not guaranteed to actually fix the precise issue, and risks creating even worse issues".
5 bucks a month for a search engine is ridiculous. 25 bucks a month for a search engine is mental institution worthy.
This is the reason why.
And duckduckgo is free. Its interesting that they don't make any comparisons to free privacy focused search engines. Cause they still don't have a compelling argument for me to use and pay for their search. But i aint no researcher so maybe it worth it then 🤷♂️
I mean, you have 100 queries free if you want to try.
Just really don't see the worth in trying it period. There are enough privacy focused free search engines that get me all the answers i need from a search already. I have no reason to want to invest more into it. And i think general public would see it the same way.
Kagi based on its features doesn't have a good enough value proposition for me to even want to try it out cause really what more are they offering?
it may be a good value proposition for people who lives revolve around searches and research but it ain't a need I have and unless ypur part of that group idk why youd want to pay for it.
And don't said ads. They are honestly laughable easy to get around still or even ignore.
How much do you figure it'd cost you to run your own, all-in?
Free considering duckduckgo covers almost all the same bases. I just don't think kagi has a compelling argument especially for the type of searching the average person does. Maybe if you have a career that revovles more around research.
Duckduckgo is not free. You pay for it by looking at ads. How much do you think it would cost you to run a service like Kagi locally?
Lmao i get ur point bud. But it seems you don't get mine? Plus really are ads the issue for you? Plenty of easy ways to never see them. Also their ad tradeoff for it being free is a better compromise to me than paying for a search engine.
I just think the idea of kagi is niche proposal considering the needs of most ppl from a search engine. I just don't think its the value proposition you are spouting but go off lol.
Where has anyone told you what search engine to use? I just wanna know where you get the idea that their pricing structure doesn't make sense.
Maybe if you read what i said you'll figure it out.