Im as anti-"AI" as the next person, but I think its important to keep in mind the larger strategic picture of "AI" w.r.t. #search when it comes to #DuckDuckGo - both have the problem of inaccurate information, mining the commons, etc. But Google's use of LLMs in search is specifically a bid to cut the rest of the internet out of information retrieval and treat it merely as a source of training data - replacing traditional search with #LLM search. That includes a whole ecosystem of surveillance and enclosure of information systems including assistants, chrome, android, google drive/docs/et al, and other vectors.
DuckDuckGo simply doesnt have the same market position to do that, and their system is set up as just an allegedly privacy preserving proxy. So while I think more new search engines are good and healthy, and LLM search is bad and doesnt work, I think we should keep the bigger picture in mind to avoid being reactionary, and I dont think the mere presence of LLM search is a good reason to stop using it.
@jonny There's also the question of "but why tho" when we've got metasearch engines like SearXNG. Relevant to our earlier conversation about chaff/winnowing for privacy as well.
@plaidtron3000
Totally. With this I assume its just trying to keep a rough feature parity for ppl who think AI search is good, and w/ this and other recent moves I also wonder how much their hand is forced by their relationship with Microsoft via Bing. Like I said I think more search engines are good, but as usual its good to have something you can recommend to someone who is not a tech person at all and is just a normal website they can use everywhere they use google.
@plaidtron3000
TBC I am not a DDG diehard I just think its the least bad option in the general use search engine space ATM. Though I also love searXNG and think distributed social bookmarking and indexing is the way forward.
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