| > LLMs are bullshitters. But that doesn't mean they're not useful > Note: This is a personal essay by Matt Ranger, Kagi’s head of ML I appreciate the disclaimer, but never underestimate someone's inability to understand something, when their job depends on them not understanding it. Bullshit isn't useful to me, I don't appreciate being lied to. You might find use in declaring the two different, but sufficiently advanced ignorance (or incompetence) is indistinguishable from actual malice, and thus they should be treated the same. Your essay, while well written, doesn't do much to convince me any modern LLM has a net positive effect. If I have to duplicate all of it's research to verify none of it is bullshit, which will only be harder after using it given the anchoring and confirmation bias it will introduce... why? |
| Your words don't match your actions. And to be clear you shouldn't build the tools that YOU find useful, you should build the tools that your users, which pay for a specific product, find useful. You could have LLMs that are actually 100% accurate in their answers that it would not matter at all to what I am raising here. People are NOT paying Kagi for bullshit AI tools, they're paying for search. If you think otherwise, prove it, make subscriptions entirely separate for both products. |
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| ▲ | freediver 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Kagi founder here. We are moving to a future where these subscriptions will be separate. Even today more that 80% of our members use Kagi Assistant and our other AI-supported products so saying "people are NOT paying Kagi for bullshit AI tools" is not accurate, mostly in the sense that we are not in the business of creating bullshit tools. Life is too short for that. I also happen to like Star Trek version of the future, where smart computers we can talk to exist. I also like that Star Trek is still 90% human drama, and 10% technology quitely working in the background in service of humans - and this is the kind of future I would like to build towards and leave for my children. Having the most accurate search in the world that has users' best interest in mind is a big part of it, and that is not going anywhere. edit: seeing the first two (negative) replies to my comment made me smile. HN is tough crowd to please :) The thing is similar to how I did paid search and went all in with my own money when everyone thought I was crazy, I did that out of own need and need for my family to have search done right and am doing the same now with AI, wanting to have it done right as a product. What you see here is the result of this group of humans that call themself Kagi best effort - not more, not less. | | |
| ▲ | Dusseldorf an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Just wanted to chip in with a positive comment among the hail of negativity here. Thank you for what you and your team are doing. I've been getting tons of great use daily out of the search and news features, as well as occasionally using the assistant. It can definitely be hard to find decent paid alternatives to the freeware crap model so prevalent on the web, seeing your philosophy here is a huge breath of fresh air. | |
| ▲ | zythyx 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I found Kagi quite recently, and after blowing through my trial credits, and now almost blowing through my low tier (300) credits, I'm starting to look at the next tier up. However, it's approaching my threshold of value vs price. I have my own payment methods for AI (OpenWebUI hosted on personal home server connected to OpenRouter API credits which costs me about $1-10 per month depnding on my usage), so seeing AI bundled with searches in the pricing for Kagi really just sucks the value out of the main reason I want to switch to Kagi. I would love to be able to just buy credits freely (say 300 credits for $2-3) and just using them whenever. No AI stuff, no subscription, just pay for my searches. If I have a lull in my searches for a month, then a) no extra resources from Kagi have been spent, and b) my credits aren't used and rollover. Similarly, if I have a heavy search month, then I'll buy more and more credits. I just don't want to buy extra AI on top of what I already have. | |
| ▲ | saghm 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > We are moving to a future where these subscriptions will be separate. Even today more that 80% of our members use Kagi Assistant and our other AI-supported products so saying "people are NOT paying Kagi for bullshit AI tools" is not accurate, mostly in the sense that we are not in the business of creating bullshit tools. For what it's worth, as someone who tends to be pretty skeptical of introducing AI tools into my life, this statistic doesn't really convince me much of the utility of them. I'm not sure how to differentiate this from selection bias where users who don't want to use AI tools just don't subscribe in the first place rather than this being a signal that the AI tools are worthwhile for people outside of a niche group who are already interested enough to pay for them. This isn't as strong a claim as what the parent comment was saying; it's not saying that the users you have don't want to be paying for AI tools, but it doesn't mean that there aren't people who are actively avoiding paying for them either. I don't pretend to have any sort of insight into whether this is a large enough group to be worth prioritizing, but I don't think the statement of your perspective here is going to be particularly compelling to anyone who doesn't already agree with you. | |
| ▲ | SleekoNiko 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | People are very passionate about their views on LLMs. :) | |
| ▲ | iLoveOncall 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > I also happen to like Star Trek version of the future, where smart computers we can talk to exist [...], this is the kind of future I would like to build towards Well if that doesn't seal the deal in making it clear that Kagi is not about search anymore, I don't know what does. Sad day for Kagi search users, wow! > Having the most accurate search in the world that has users' best interest in mind is a big part of it It's not, you're just trying to convince yourself it is. |
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| ▲ | VHRanger 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I can't really do anything with the recommendation you're making. The recommendation you made worked from your personal preference as an axiom. The fact is that the APIs in search cost vastly more than the LLMs used in quick answer / quick assistant. If you use the expensive AI stuff (research assistant or the big tier 1 models) that's expensive. But also: it is in a separate subscription, the $25/month one. We used not to give any access to the assistant at the $5 and $10 tier, now we do, it's a free upgrades for users. |
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