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[–] 79 points 1 year ago (9 children)

I use duckduckgo and my eyes were so used to glazing over the ai preview I don't know when it changed but it's now a Wikipedia summary, and actually useful.

Wikipedia is everything ai chatbots want to be, and why the right hates it so much.

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  • [–] 46 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    DuckDuckGo has a "NoAI" subdomain:
    https://noai.duckduckgo.com/

    Works like normal DDG,
    except, you guessed it, no AI :)

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    An LLM with a cultivating source is a lot better than what the other major ones are, but it still has the issue of selectivity based on probability and not weighing on evidence (unless it does that, which would be huge). Because people are naturally gullible and believe the first thing they read, especially if it's presented as if "someone" has validated it for them.

    But the good part is that both DDG and Firefox made it both obvious and easy to disable the AI.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    selectivity based on probability and not weighing on evidence

    I don’t follow this, but an LLM’s whole “world” is basically the prompt it’s fed. It can “weigh” that, but then how does one choose what’s in the prompt?

    What they need is cheaper long context (being worked on, especially outside the Tech Bro circles), and primarily, much more sophisticated databases to hook up to. Basically they need what WolframAlpha was trying to build a decade ago: a structured, searchable repository of human knowledge they can query that’s better than random Google search results.

    It’s honestly insane this isn’t the first concern of all the AI Bros. The focus is on training data and “AGI” scams when they should basically be building a RAG system to end all RAG systems if they want something functional.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    selectivity based on probability and not weighing on evidence

    I don’t follow this, but an LLM’s whole “world” is basically the prompt it’s fed. It can “weigh” that, but then how does one choose what’s in the prompt?

    Some describe or use the analogy of an autocompleter with a very big database. LLMs are more complex than just that, but that's the idea, and when the model looks at the prompt and context of the conversation, it's choosing the best match of words to fulfill that prompt. My point was that the best word or phrase completion doesn't mean it's the best answer, or even right. It's just seen as the most probabilistic in the huge training data. If that data is crap, the answers are crap. Having Wikipedia as a source and presumably the only source is better than many places on the internet to pull from, but that doesn't guarantee the answers that pop up will be always correct or the best in a choice of answers. It's just the most likely based on the data.

    It would be different if it was AGI because by definition it would be able to find the best data based on the data itself, not text probability, and could look at anything connected including discussion behind the article and make a judgement on how solid the information is for the prompt in question. We don't have that yet. Maybe we will, maybe we won't for any number of reasons.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Is it their ai mode? Or just the wiki summary that shows up on some searches? Havent tried their ai thing

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  • [+] 50 points 1 year ago (6 children)
  • [–] 63 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Honestly, the fact that they even have a remove button easily accessible like this is miles above everyone else.
    I'd still prefer opt-in, but this is better than nothing.

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  • [–] 21 points 1 year ago

    Explanation of the image

    Spoilers for the game Deltarune, particularly the alternative routesThe image depicts a dialogue box with the option "proceed" selected using the soul. In the Weird Route (an alternative route that changes various events in the game), the word "proceed" is used to represent morally wrong actions that advance the weird route (for example, forcing the character Noelle to run through the mouse puzzles in Chapter 2, or forcing the thorn ring onto her finger in Chapter 4)

    The use in the meme suggests that Mozilla is forcing the change through, without listening to their users

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    someone is paying them to add it probably

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  • [–] 44 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    I like the firefox AI translation because it doesn't send the text to fucking google. It translates it on my machine, and its shitty but good enough most of the time.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    And when it fails, it fails spectacularily!

    The mistranslations can be (and usually are) absolutely hilarious. Saying a part of me will be disappointed once they inevitably fix it is an understatement.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    It's like we're in some sort of weird route

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  • [+] -8 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    no-one

    someone is in a bubble.

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (8 children)
  • [+] -19 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    No, moron, I just know people who use it.

    And if I did, so what?

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    "So what" …the defining ethos of the slop bros who don't mind when technology is built on the back of stolen content and ecosystem collapse.

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  • [–] -4 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    stolen content and ecosystem collapse

    Ok, I just have to say... You... just described all of capitalism.

    I understand the Anti-Ai push, but I wish we would stop acting like LLMs are doing something new or inherently worse then what we are already doing. Search engines are also themselves massive data vats thay use energy and shit unrenewably. Computing like we currently do it in any form is bad.

    Could we please stop being like "AI is DesTRoYinG ThE PlaNEt!". Because yes, it is, but every fucking thing we do in technoledgy is too. You think the fediverse is all on "green" energy?

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Bad take. The energy AI is using right now compared to all search engines is immense and real people can feel this effect because their energy bills are rising as a direct cause of new datacenters all for AI.

    A lot of things are destroying the planet, but AI is certainly up there towards the top i'd think.

    (And not everything in tech is bad)

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Agreed. While plenty of people have been covering energy use by technology for many years as well as the many dangers of social media and other online services…the fact is Gen AI simply takes everything that was already questionable and doubles it…quadruples it… Yes, not everything in tech is bad! And the stuff that was bad before does not excuse what's frighteningly worse now.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Your comment says a lot more about you than it does me; you're part of the problem.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago

    I'm sure from your perspective I am part of the problem - you haven't defined it but I figure given your defence of an obviously false statement you consider anyone not part of the anti-AI crusade to be part of the problem. I hope you have enough clogs.

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  • [+] -9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Is there really a choice? Ai is here to stay. Also majority of Firefox users aren't using it specifically as an alternative to big tech

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  • [+] -2 points 1 year ago (2 children)