Why we do it:

In addition to the environmental cost of AI queries, there are serious ethical and practical concerns with allowing AI to replace your own scan. The LLM technology is nowhere near the accuracy you should expect for something replacing your own human intelligence.

Accuracy

LLM AIs are not designed for accuracy and do not know the difference between common misconceptions and facts. They will repeat common bigotries, hallucinate answers when they can’t find them, and are susceptible to intentional manipulation. You should never rely on an AI summary without checking the facts.

Decay of real information

And where will you check the facts, if the web sites the AI “learned” from stop getting traffic? How will the thousands of information providers online fund their efforts if AI simply steals it without so much as a link back?

Fairness

For decades web sites have had a symbiotic relationship with Google, crafting content in exchange for links and traffic. How does the information ecosystem survive if Google terminates its side of the deal, taking but giving nothing back?

What to use instead

udm14 feeds a “no AI” request to Google and returns the results, old-school. If you want to send Google a message about mandatory AI, this does! If you want to quit Google entirely, read on.

DuckDuckGo is the most common place people move from Google. It does offer AI tools, but allows you to easily disable them, so the choice is yours. They also offer some browser add-ons to help. We use DuckDuckGo and about 80% of the time it finds what we want. The rest of the time…udm14!

Kagi isn’t free! Yes, that’s a plus! You aren’t the product, you’re the customer. It does offer AI summaries, but you can turn them off entirely (no generation on the back end.)

These are just a few common starting points for people looking to move from Google Search. If none of them is quite what you’re looking for, check out these articles for more options.