It wasn't "This person used an Internet Service to write me a poem." It was , "This person searched for a winery using an Internet service so I wouldn't date them."

There's an absolutely enormous difference between the two use cases.

Do you drop a friend if he sets up a route in Google maps instead of using a paper one?

It has been shown that using Google maps actually reduces your ability to get around too and think for yourself when it comes to orientation.

I think a lot in the comments are missing the point. It's okay to think this, but letting it affect your friendships in such a way just makes you a shitty friend.

Llm's don't read the SEO keywords and then give you a result filtered through Google's adsense. Llm's read absolutely everything and the results are (as of now) not filtered by who paid the most to show you a particular result.

Duckduckgo uses Bing in the backend.

I used Qwant for quite a while before swapping to Kagi. I've heard great things about Startpage as well, which has the fantastic Anonymous View feature.

I can't recommend Kagi enough.

What? Have you used google any time in the last year? Its nothing like a phone book. Its more similar to an infomercial. Completely useless, a waste of time, MALICIOUSLY BAD AT ITS JOB, and leaves you without anything useful for having interacted. Its impossible to use. I don't know what software you are using, but googles AI is a million times better than its search engine.

Earlier today i googled something and got NO RESULTS AT ALL. Google tried to tell me it doesnt exist. Yet, their AI had the exact info i was looking for and even linked me to its source, which is what i had spent the last hour googling to try and find. I know youre going to downvote because it goes against your narrative, but your narrative is factually inaccurate

I don't actually think many people are open to changing anything, even with information that may indicate good reasons to. Even with good reasons proving they should.

This entire argument could be had over every divisive societal split.

At first they seem rational.

"Letting common people learn how to read books is a bad idea."

"Listening to the radio is the down fall of this world."

"TV is a really bad idea."

"I don't make friends with Nazis."

Then they run the gamut of becoming they sound ever so slightly smarter.

"I don't make friends with conservatives."

"I don't make friends with Republicans."

Skipping ahead:

"I don't hangout with people who spend all their time watching (insert streaming service here)"

"I don't like people who don't hate AI."

"I don't date people who use AI."

"AI use will prevent me from being friends with someone."

This is just a smattering of divides, there are plenty in between all these if I had to make a spectrum of them, but you get the point.

Anyway, somewhere on this spectrum you find your spot, and everything previous to that spot seems absolutely obvious, your exact spot seems reasonable, and everything beyond you seems utter lunacy.

Currently I'm pretty strong in the "all AI is bad AI" end of it. I think translating can be useful, but still isn't great, but I can easily see how a perfectly-preserved translation can be useful. But I don't see much actual use or value beyond that. And given it's enormous power and water drain just to support something that might be valuable later, this approach is ass-backwards.

Previous world shaking technologies were easy to find value in pretty quick. Language, printing press, radio, TV... So could be used for brain rot, but information sharing is generally good (if it's honest).

But AI doesn't really have a killer application (yet, anyway) and devoting this much to it before we figure out any potential way to use it that makes it worth what we're giving up to use it is absolutely bonkers.

I don't personally currently know of anything that's even possible that it can be used for, but I'm willing to hear use cases.

Meanwhile we've got lazy thinkers that have less than zero reason to believe in God that still do. So just having evidence isn't all there is to it. You have to be open enough to acknowledge and change with that evidence.