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@mkennedy I still use a lot of search, but less than before. The reason for this is twofold. With kagi, I don't need to fire up multiple searches to get good results. Normally just one search request. But I also see an increased use of Mistral, Codestral and Co. especially for coding tasks.
@mkennedy I'm still using search as much as before, even have set up my own meta search engine (powered by searxng) to get away from all the AI crap (and Kagi, after the CEO turned out to be a "keep the politics out of tech" bro). The only thing I use an LLM for is when I can't remember a word that I can still describe.
@foosel Hey Gina, interesting usage. :)
@mkennedy I have a word for “life after search”. It's "retirement”.
@pauleveritt Ha! I'm here for it. Now about that funding of the reitrement... ;)
@mkennedy 211 sounded crazy low, and I was surely going to be many times that. I feel like I lean heavily on search, especially when coding (I don't use AI, so far).
I have a little python script that counts searches in Firefox history, so I tweaked it to print the date so I could make a count. 79 so far in March! 84 in Feb!
https://shallowsky.com/blog/tech/counting-searches.html
I wonder if Firefox isn't saving everything. Still, very interesting question: thanks for raising it.
@akkana 211 did sound low, but interesting yours was low too. Nice to use a script for it! I used Kagi's your search stats for my account so it counted across all devices and all browsers. Should have called that out but still MUCH lower than a few years ago for me.
@mkennedy I search less if you don't count AI but I use perplexity.ai and still think of it as a search. I use it because it is better than traditional search when I need nuanced information, like "how can I combine libraries X and Y to accomplish Z?" I don't trust the answer but check the links it gives as references. They can be more relevant than trying to put X, Y, and Z into a normal search engine. It also seems better at tuning out AI slop search results.
@mkennedy StartPage uses the Google index, so should be similar to an incognito Google search. Most engines use Google or Bing. I recently learned of mojeek.com that has its own index but I haven't used it much so far.
@mkennedy I use search about as much as I have for several years because I actively avoid AI tools, especially in my messaging tools. I don't trust the answers to be right often enough to expend the brain cycles deciding if *this* result is correct or hallucinated. I even run my WhatsApp (by far the dominant tool in South Africa) in a language I speak far less well than English because the AI make-it-up button isn't available in Afrikaans.
@kimvanwyk Hey Kim. I know the feeling. I'd been really disappointed in the AI tooling until o1/o1 pro came out recently. That + deep research has changed my opinion and use. But I almost never use it for "rewrite this message" or "clean this up" or whatever. Just big research projects.