It's an advertisement for noai.duckduckgo.com, a version of DuckDuckGo that disables the AI features and tries to filter out AI-generated content. (Or, if you choose "yes", it's an advertisement for DuckDuckGo's AI features.)
Aside from the fact that it kind of obviously is if you "vote" the fact that it says "Not sure yet? That's okay — vote anyway!" is kind of a give-away that this isn't going to produce anything like rigorously useful data on the question (it produces a lot of other data though!)
At least for me it tells me about some options to use ai privately for duckduckgo so I assume it's from them. Possibly collecting views for Ai generated search results.
Yes, it seems to be DuckDuckGo advertising that they'll let you control the use of AI in searches rather than foisting it on you by default the way e.g. Google does.
I think my stance for AI definitely somewhere between these two options. A sentiment I often see is being staunchly anti-AI in any way, and I'm definitely not that. I feel like that is the more useful divide too, anti-AI vs open to AI. Being open to AI doesn't mean being one of those 'full steam ahead' on anything and everything AI though.
Edit: I was pleasantly surprised to see that they don't add any tracking cookies from what I can tell, regardless of how you "vote". Still feels rather tasteless.
I use AI (LLMs) all the time, but I use it very intentionally. I don't reach to it for everything.
A while ago I was paying for both Kagi Ultimate and Perplexity Premium to see which one fit my needs better. I ended up dropping my Perplexity subscription in favor of Kagi Ultimate, because Perplexity often lead me down rabbitholes of trying to beat the LLM into submission, where dropping to a simple keyword search would short circuit such loops.
Sometimes LLM assisted search helps me get to the information I want faster. It can be nice to be able to provide lots of context to narrow down your query to specifically what you need, in ways that do not work with keyword searches.
Sometimes keyword searches get me to the information I want faster, especially when I know there are specific resources where I'll find the information I want, such as looking at the documentation for a specific version of something, or some any kind of information that decays over time.
I don't know if I can really trust the data. 93% of 40k+ votes are NO AI. How is that possible. I am not sure if I would like to go back to time when I couldn't code or when I had to do all the labourious work of writing test cases on my own. Now, my time is free to build more 0 to 1 ideas, faster and more effectively.
Software developers might be majority here in HN comments, but definitely a small minority across general population. A lot of people are negatively affected by AI: computer hardware is expensive because AI companies bought all memory, Windows 11 is crap because Microsoft reworked their operating system into AI-driven trojan horse, many people lost jobs because AI companies convinced top management of their employers’ people will be replaced with computers any day now, etc.
> I don't know if I can really trust the data. 93% of 40k+ votes are NO AI. How is that possible.
You give a question that requires nuance, forces it into a 50/50 situation and then you'll have everyone in the middle defaulting to "No" since it's closer than "Yes". Then use that as evidence for everyone hating AI.
I saw your comment, thought "This person must have not checked the website, can't be just a yes or no question because that'd be so misleading"
Clicks on the page.
[Yes] - [No]
I think it serves as a beautiful visualization of everything that is wrong in the world today. Not because of the question, nor the answers, but because of thinking something like that can just be divided into "Agree" and "Disagree" and somehow think that's a good idea.
Can someone clarify this strong position against AI? That it be completely without AI? AI is a great option, but sucks as your only option. I think this true in reverse as well.
Because as consumers we already dont have a choice, if the only options are AI forced down my throat (Windows, search, surveillance, phones, you name it) or no AI, Im going no AI.
Thats without considering negative externalities of resource cost, operational cost, and the complete flooding of the shared internet commons with low quality slop.
I'm sure we will see lots of hand-wringing here on Ycombinator about the results, which will completely miss the point of how many people in the real world are sick of how overhyped AI is and the negative impacts that hype is having. The tech industry's obsession with AI is souring a lot of people on it because adoption/promotion isn't happening organically.
I haven't seen a single ad from ChatGPT here in Spain, yet everywhere I go, there are tons of people using ChatGPT for all kinds of stuff. Last time I saw it in the wild, it was the person who was giving me the keys to a car I wanted to test drove, that was using ChatGPT and had it opened on their computer.
Seemingly to me, adoption is happening without ads or promotion, how do you explain away this?
FWIW, I wouldn't say I'm "YES AI" nor "NO AI", but I do use LLMs daily to programming.
I feel like discussiong ai with people who hated the seat belt, enjoyed smoking inside, giving babies alcohol and doing operations on babies because they couldn't feel pain.
So many more people have clear stances against AI but the energy consumption of bitcoin was seldomly a hotly debated topic.
Lets be clear, technology advances. You can embrace it and learn it and use it, or you lose.
For me most shocking thing is: I wouldn't have expected so many people getting AI wrong or not getting it at all. 20 Years of software engineering and i have never experienced a technology so weird and crazy and with such a fast progress than AI/ML/Neural Networks.
Is it perfect? No. But if you would have asked ANYONE just a few years back "Hey i give you a 100 Million dollars, you will write some software however you like and I expect it to be able to solve any problem (an easy one for the start) but i will not tell you what it will be" we would have build something like IBM Watson and it would have just failed.
but we have a breakthrough in neural networks progress. I can ask it in german, in english, in shitty english and shitty german. I can generate any picture i want, i can generate videos.
This technology bridges computer and human. Its the FIRST TIME EVER I could build something like a Star Trek Computer.
Just think this 5 or 20 years further and its clear that these models will be better, relevant better than today. You will (if still needed) be able to stand in a VR world and talk to a computer and it will understand you well enough and it will be able to generate what ever you want.
Of course we still need to solve a lot more issues but honestly, before ChatGPT it felt like we solved software but it was not clear how it will continue. There was something missing.
And the way we build out compute, can be a milestone for material science, pharma, biochemistry etc.
Ah yes, the next layer in questioning the human technology department. I'd like to speak to the manager of technology. We have some other important questions that you haven't answered;
I'm "kind of yes AI" and use it everyday, mostly for programming, for other stuff too, been doing for years. People on HN would probably call me "AI zealot", considering I have nuance with my opinions.
So obviously I voted "No", because that's closer to what I do, than "Yes". I can imagine lots of the "No" votes are like this.
"Yes AI" means you're in favor of using AI for absolutely everything, including making court decisions, medical decisions, etc.
"No AI" means you're against using AI for anything, and oh by the way that includes all technology previously identified as AI, including various search, pathfinding, scheduling, and planning techniques; rule-based systems; logic programming; knowledge representaion; clustering; computer vision; and robotic control. If you're in the "No AI" camp, you need to immediately reformat your hard disk and then microwave your computer, or risk being branded a traitor.
Give me a frickin break. Absolute trash.
Edit: I was pleasantly surprised to see that they don't add any tracking cookies from what I can tell, regardless of how you "vote". Still feels rather tasteless.
A while ago I was paying for both Kagi Ultimate and Perplexity Premium to see which one fit my needs better. I ended up dropping my Perplexity subscription in favor of Kagi Ultimate, because Perplexity often lead me down rabbitholes of trying to beat the LLM into submission, where dropping to a simple keyword search would short circuit such loops.
Sometimes LLM assisted search helps me get to the information I want faster. It can be nice to be able to provide lots of context to narrow down your query to specifically what you need, in ways that do not work with keyword searches.
Sometimes keyword searches get me to the information I want faster, especially when I know there are specific resources where I'll find the information I want, such as looking at the documentation for a specific version of something, or some any kind of information that decays over time.
You give a question that requires nuance, forces it into a 50/50 situation and then you'll have everyone in the middle defaulting to "No" since it's closer than "Yes". Then use that as evidence for everyone hating AI.
I would hope we can engage these questions with a little subtlety, rather than just "picking a team."
Clicks on the page.
[Yes] - [No]
I think it serves as a beautiful visualization of everything that is wrong in the world today. Not because of the question, nor the answers, but because of thinking something like that can just be divided into "Agree" and "Disagree" and somehow think that's a good idea.
https://noai.duckduckgo.com
or to
https://yesai.duckduckgo.com/#chat
Thats without considering negative externalities of resource cost, operational cost, and the complete flooding of the shared internet commons with low quality slop.
-- Barbara
Seemingly to me, adoption is happening without ads or promotion, how do you explain away this?
FWIW, I wouldn't say I'm "YES AI" nor "NO AI", but I do use LLMs daily to programming.
So many more people have clear stances against AI but the energy consumption of bitcoin was seldomly a hotly debated topic.
Lets be clear, technology advances. You can embrace it and learn it and use it, or you lose.
For me most shocking thing is: I wouldn't have expected so many people getting AI wrong or not getting it at all. 20 Years of software engineering and i have never experienced a technology so weird and crazy and with such a fast progress than AI/ML/Neural Networks.
Is it perfect? No. But if you would have asked ANYONE just a few years back "Hey i give you a 100 Million dollars, you will write some software however you like and I expect it to be able to solve any problem (an easy one for the start) but i will not tell you what it will be" we would have build something like IBM Watson and it would have just failed.
but we have a breakthrough in neural networks progress. I can ask it in german, in english, in shitty english and shitty german. I can generate any picture i want, i can generate videos.
This technology bridges computer and human. Its the FIRST TIME EVER I could build something like a Star Trek Computer.
Just think this 5 or 20 years further and its clear that these models will be better, relevant better than today. You will (if still needed) be able to stand in a VR world and talk to a computer and it will understand you well enough and it will be able to generate what ever you want.
Of course we still need to solve a lot more issues but honestly, before ChatGPT it felt like we solved software but it was not clear how it will continue. There was something missing.
And the way we build out compute, can be a milestone for material science, pharma, biochemistry etc.
"No AI" come on
"Are you yes or no on Internet?"
"Are you yes or no on electricity?"
"Are you yes or no on fire?"
Almost as good as a link to the relevant CXDC comic:
https://characterdatabase.org/wiki/index.php/Microsoft_Offic...
So obviously I voted "No", because that's closer to what I do, than "Yes". I can imagine lots of the "No" votes are like this.
"No AI" means you're against using AI for anything, and oh by the way that includes all technology previously identified as AI, including various search, pathfinding, scheduling, and planning techniques; rule-based systems; logic programming; knowledge representaion; clustering; computer vision; and robotic control. If you're in the "No AI" camp, you need to immediately reformat your hard disk and then microwave your computer, or risk being branded a traitor.
And no, there is no middle ground. Pick a side!
/s