DuckDuckGo Dabbles with AI Search

https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/08/duckassist/

by georgehill • 3 years ago

53 18 3 years ago

techcrunch.com

grey_earthling• 3 years ago

A search engine’s job is to surface reliable information quickly.

I disagree with this. For me, a search engine's job is to find relevant web pages quickly.

philliphaydon2• 3 years ago

I partially agree.

The only thing I've used google for in the last 2 weeks is to quickly search for a wikipedia page or imdb page for an actor and movie.

Everything else is in ChatGPT now. The information from ChatGPT, even tho sometimes wrong, is far FAR superior to google now.

iakov• 3 years ago

But how do you know if it's true information?

ChatGPT has been shown time and time to mix up facts, censor information, and make shit up. It's not an "AI", it's a glorified autocomplete box. I struggle to see how it can replace a search engine.

dchuk• 3 years ago

A way to “surface reliable information quickly” is to “find relevant web pages quickly”…so is extracting and summarizing info from the internet that matches the query using AI. You quoted the end, and said you instead wanted the means

shadowgovt• 3 years ago

Google (and apparently DDG)'s position is that they're not building that. Google started building that, but only because it was the technology available to get closer to the desired goal.

osrec• 3 years ago

I agree. I want to do the interpretation, and have the search engine just find me the relevant web pages.

If I need help interpreting something, I will use a separate service for that.

enriquto• 3 years ago

For me, a search engine's job is to find relevant web pages quickly.

I disagree even with this. Please, no "relevant" pages bullshit. Give me just pages that contain the search terms verbatim.

JohnFen2• 3 years ago

Heh, I read "relevant" as meaning "containing the terms I'm searching for". You comment made me realize that the definition has shifted over the years. I agree with you -- I think that Google, for instance, trying to read my mind for what I "really want" is the main reason that Google search sucks for me. I expect no better when any other search engine tries that.

pkdpic• 3 years ago

it’s drawing on natural language technology from ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Anthropic
sources it’s using for DuckAssist are — currently — “99%+ Wikipedia”

Not sure how I feel about either of these.

What's the difference between using Bing, chatGPT or DuckAssist if they're all underpinned by OpenAI? (currently I gravitate towards Bing) Obviously Bing is performing live searches right now but thinking more about the near future.

If it's mainly summarizing Wikipedia rather than aggregating more diverse web results does that undermine or harm Wikipedia somehow long-term?

And what about poor Google? I've only used it for a couple of times for measurement conversion since getting access to bing chat, and it was really only because I felt bad bothering bing with it.

vanilla_nut• 3 years ago

Maybe it's a good thing for Wikipedia? DDG can scrape Wikipedia once, and then let their AI act as a sort of "knowledge CDN" so Wikipedia ultimately serves fewer page loads. As long as DDG supports Wikipedia in some way that seems like a net positive.

Seems to me that Bing and Google's chatbots are having truthiness issues because they're just scraping information from all over the internet. Any HN reader knows all too well that you can't believe everything you read on the internet. While Wikipedia isn't necessarily all true, the bar is much, much, much higher than the truthiness of the rest of the internet. Can anyone else verify if a LLM trained on a set of mostly-true info like Wikipedia will still make shit up?

rpastuszak• 3 years ago

Can anyone else verify if a LLM trained on a set of mostly-true info like Wikipedia will still make shit up?

It will, but less frequently. For instance, I can imagine a situation where it would give a plausibly sounding answer to a question based on an incorrect premise. The issue is that the bullshit responses will sound plausible from the stylistic pov.

Under the hood LLMs we're talking about here are still just "spicy autocomplete" with non-deterministic results. The results are impressive, just not in the way the VC driven discourse/hype would suggest.

_cactusjuice_• 3 years ago

I am starting to not care at all with the AI search trends. I went through all the hurdles and frustrations to sign up for bing AI. When I finally got access and asked my first question it straight up lied to me. This tech needs another decade in the oven because it is nothing more than a cool toy that pretends to have conversations with you

djkivi• 3 years ago

Maybe instead of a new Ask Jeeves, we need an Ask George?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn_PSJsl0LQ

JohnFen2• 3 years ago

I really hope that DDG doesn't roll this into their web search, though. As a separate tool, cool. But as part of web search, it would make DDG less valuable to me.

OTOH, maybe that's what would finally push me to using Kagi, which might not be the worst thing.

spiffytech• 3 years ago

Brave Search recently added AI answers and I'm surprised at how much I like it. To get the gist of a complex topic, it's better than Google's snippets, and better than being redirected to lengthy articles.

hiidrew• 3 years ago

I've been loving https://www.perplexity.ai/, find myself using it more and more. Don't have Bing AI access yet but seems similar in that it cites sources, but more powerful with it's ChatGPT-likeness.

DuckDuckGo Dabbles with AI Search

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