I guess they haven’t asked me or it’d be 91%
this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2026
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Okay, so that’s not what the article says. It says that 90% of respondents don’t want AI search.
Moreover, the article goes into detail about how DuckDuckGo is still going to implement AI anyway.
Seriously, titles in subs like this need better moderation.
The title was clearly engineered to generate clicks and drive engagement. That is not how journalism should function.
A massive underestimation
I would have no problem with AI if it could be useful.
The problem is no matter how many times I'm promised otherwise it cannot automate my job and talk to the idiots for me. It just hallucinates a random gibberish which is obviously unhealthful.
It’s really good at answering customer questions for me, to be honest.
But, I still have to okay it. Just in case. There’s no trust.
However that still does take a lot less bandwidth for me because I’m not good at the customer facing aspects of my business.
I still would, as the increased productivity, once again, does not lead to reduced hours. Always more productive, always locked into a bullshit schedule.
AI is not impressive or worth all the trade offs and worse quality of life. It is decent in some areas but mostly grifter tech.
On DuckDuckGo that is unsurprising
Don't build AI into everything and assume you know how your users want to use it. If they do want to use AI, give me an MCP server to interact with your service instead and let users build out their own tooling.
I think LLMs are fine for specific uses. A useful technology for brainstorming, debugging code, generic code examples, etc. People are just weary of oligarchs mandating how we use technology. We want to be customers but they want to instead shape how we work, as if we are livestock
Right? Like let me choose if and when I want to use it. Don't shove it down our throats and then complain when we get upset or don't use it how you want us to use it. We'll use it however we want to use it, not you.
I should further add - don't fucking use it in places it's not capable of properly functioning and then trying to deflect the blame on the AI from yourself, like what Air Canada did.
When Air Canada's chatbot gave incorrect information to a traveller, the airline argued its chatbot is "responsible for its own actions".
Artificial intelligence is having a growing impact on the way we travel, and a remarkable new case shows what AI-powered chatbots can get wrong – and who should pay. In 2022, Air Canada's chatbot promised a discount that wasn't available to passenger Jake Moffatt, who was assured that he could book a full-fare flight for his grandmother's funeral and then apply for a bereavement fare after the fact.
According to a civil-resolutions tribunal decision last Wednesday, when Moffatt applied for the discount, the airline said the chatbot had been wrong – the request needed to be submitted before the flight – and it wouldn't offer the discount. Instead, the airline said the chatbot was a "separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions". Air Canada argued that Moffatt should have gone to the link provided by the chatbot, where he would have seen the correct policy.
The British Columbia Civil Resolution Tribunal rejected that argument, ruling that Air Canada had to pay Moffatt $812.02 (£642.64) in damages and tribunal fees
ruling that Air Canada had to pay Moffatt $812.02 (£642.64) in damages and tribunal fees
That is a tiny fraction of a rounding error for a company that size. And it doesn't come anywhere near being just compensation for the stress and loss of time it likely caused.
There should be some kind of general punitive "you tried to screw over a customer or the general public" fee defined as a fraction of the companies' revenue. Could be waived for small companies if the resulting sum is too small to be worth the administrative overhead.
Definitely agree, there should have been some punitive damages for making them go through that while they were mourning.
...what kind of brain damage did the rep have to think that was a viable defense? surely their human customer service personnel are also responsible for their own actions?
It makes sense to do it, it's just along the lines of evil company.
If they lose, it's some bad press and people will forget.
If they win, they've begun setting precedent to fuck over their customers and earn more money. Even if it only had a 5% chance of success, it was probably worth it.
sure but there was no way that wouldn't have been thrown out.
But the shareholders..... /s
Sure, but I wonder how many of them actually understand what AI is and means.
Most commenters on both Reddit and Lemmy don't understand what a LLM is or how/if it differentiates from AI itself.
Google became crap ever since they added AI. Microsoft became crap ever since they added AI. OpenAI started losing money the moment they started working on AI. Coincidence? I think not!
Rational people don't want Abominable Intelligence anywhere near them.
Personally, I don't mind the AI overviews, but they shouldn't show up every time you do a search. That's just a waste of energy.
Google became crap about 10 years ago when they added the product banner in the top, and had the first 5-10 search results be promoted ads. Long before they ever considered adding AI.
Time is sneaking up on us. It's not even 10 years anymore. It's closer to 20. 💀
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Google and Microsoft were crap before AI, I don't remember when google removed the "don't be evil" but at that point they have been crap for a few years already.
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Customer service was sparse before, now it is nonexistent.
It's so funny to see this pushed out as a marketing campaign for DuckDuckGo AI and it totally flopped.
If they take the poll to heart it can still be a sucess. They can advertise that they listened to their users and changed course.
That's the thing about really good marketing - it should not only drive users to use your service, but the reactions to that marketing can be used as market research to improve your product and future marketing in a manner that drives even more users to your product.
I am fairly sure this is the actual point of the campaign. The selection bias for a ‘poll’ like this (one that instantly on-boards you to the ai-disabled version of your product if you click answer negative, no less) is so great that I don’t believe the suits/analysts at ddg ever envisioned a different result. Polls and comment sections lure the extreme viewpoints and the ddg crowd already skews privacy-conscious so this was a highly expected outcome.
What the campaign does instead is:
- Show that you ‘care’ and ‘listen to feedback’ (by a response to the poll somewhere between disabling the ai by default to making the no-ai button a little bit bigger)
- show that you have the ability to turn off ai on your product in the first place to those who care
- like I said above, directly onboard people onto their preferred search strategy so that when relatives/friends send this around people get a little taste, and realize this exists
It’s quite clever imo, and there’s no real bad outcome for what I assume is a pretty inexpensive campaign.
that was why i started using ddg
While no doubt it may be that most users of DuckDuckGo are anti-AI given the nature of the service and who it attracts, the 90% metric makes me believe that the people who ambivalently use DuckDuckGo's AI (and are not pro or anti) did not vote in this at all and may find themselves using DuckDuckGo less if they see the surface-level convenience randomly disappear from the service.
So I assume they'll get rid of the AI and they'll see a drop in users overtime as a percentage of minimum effort types get confused or annoyed. And then they'll bring it back as they see a drop in users, annoy the users that hate AI and they'll leave as well. And neither group will end up ever returning.
This whole poll was a terrible idea.
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.
whoa nice! Thanks!
For people trying to configure that in mozilla (I am trying to get away from it but for now :/)
- -> Edit -> Settings -> Search
- "Search Shortcuts" -> Add (to add a search engine)
- "Search Engine Name": DuckDuckGo Lite
- "URL with %s in place of search term":
https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite/?q=%25s(this has to be=%s, lemmy keeps mutilating that to=%25severytime I save my post) - "Keyword (optional)": @ddgl (or pick whatever you like - it appears @ddg is hardcoded and gets refused)
- -> Save Engine
- scroll up to the top, "Default Search Engine"
- from the dropdown list, select "DuckGuckGo Lite"
Done.
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There’s noai.duckduckgo.com and lite.duckduckgo.com to help you use DDG without this ai stuff and without having to fiddle with settings. Especially helpful if you frequently open private tabs and then the settings get cleared on normal DDG.
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.
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