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.
