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DuckDuckGo is asking for a Yes or No vote on AI

16 points

by jaredcwhite

1 hour ago

| past

| 5 comments

| duckduckgo.com

| HN

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Kim_Bruning

12 minutes ago

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"Yes AI or No AI?" What's the actual question? What am I answering? How is this measured? What are the consequences?

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minimaxir

1 hour ago

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This is a confusing marketing campaign because DDG is very much aware that the people voting on this poll are not a representative sample of DDG users.

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divbzero

50 minutes ago

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This looks like a marketing campaign to me too. It makes sense to just give users an option: In fact, users can already turn off AI in DDG search results by clicking the settings icon on the top right corner of the Search Assist panel.

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PaulHoule

1 hour ago

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Yeah, but there are enough passionate anti-AI people out there that reaching out to them could be the killer marketing move of 2026. The poll is 4% Yes, 96% No when I checked it. It's pretty clear that pro-AI marketing falls flat, see "Copilot + PC"

People pushing AI might get investors today, but companies that take a stand against it might get the customers. Pick one.

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minimaxir

1 hour ago

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If you vote Yes AI, you get a link to https://yesai.duckduckgo.com/ which references http://duck.ai/, DDG's AI platform, and the passionate anti-AI people don't like anything AI adjacent which DDG is doing.

DDG is trying to have their cake and eat it too.

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add-sub-mul-div

1 hour ago

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What does having both an AI and a non-AI mode have to do with the vote not being a representative sample? Did they promote this vote exclusively to one camp or the other?

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minimaxir

46 minutes ago

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Another aspect of internet polls as a marketing technique (and a poor source of representative opinion) is to implicitly encourage voters to brigade a certain option, which just increases visibility to the poll especially if it's a contentious topic.

Case in point: https://bsky.app/profile/lexfeathers.ca/post/3mckp3y57d52b

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chrisjj

1 hour ago

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I'd be interested to hear the source of that info.

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minimaxir

1 hour ago

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That's just standard sampling bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_bias

It's why public internet polls are more for fun/validating confirmation bias than actually gleaning actionable statistical insight, and why no one does them anymore. In this particular instance, the presentation and call-to-action rules out the "fun" angle of the poll.

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chrisjj

1 hour ago

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So... who is it confusing, exactly?

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minimaxir

57 minutes ago

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Confusing is my personal perspective, interpreting the campaign in good faith.

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semilin

47 minutes ago

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As it stands I don't know what this poll means. Does "No AI" mean that generative AI should never be used or offered? Does "Yes AI" mean that generative AI should be used for everything all the time?

One might accuse me of being intentionally daft, asserting this to be a simple sentiment poll, but I genuinely can't tell. If it were the case, this should ask "do you overall like or dislike generative AI?" Either way this encourages a lack of nuanced thinking on the subject which both tech bro shills and instinctual AI-luddites oft suffer from. The results of this poll are uninterpretable and the effects on the quality of discourse can only be negative.

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reify

44 minutes ago

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Tor Browser and The mullvad browser have NoAI enabled as default

or add it yourself

  https://noai.duckduckgo.com/?q=%s

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chrisjj

1 hour ago

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Currently 4% v 96%.