You Can Try DuckDuckGo’s AI Search Right Now

https://lifehacker.com/you-can-try-duckduckgos-ai-search-right-now-1850203857


Everyone wants in on AI these days, and for good reason. AI programs and services are pulling in millions of active users and dominating headlines. ChatGPT alone reached 100 million active users within two months. The latest players in the AI space are search engines, which want to transform traditional “googling” into educational conversations with artificial intelligence. DuckDuckGo is taking a slightly different approach, incorporating AI into search without the chat—instead, offering users clear, concise answers to their queries.

The search company is dubbing their new product “DuckAssist,” powered by natural language technology from OpenAI (creators of ChatGPT) and Anthropic. Unlike sophisticated and complex chatbots like Microsoft’s Bing or Google’s upcoming Bard, DuckAssist won’t offer you deeper learning through human-like conversations. Instead, the feature simply kicks in whenever you perform a search that could reasonably be answered by Wikipedia. When that happens, you’ll see DuckAssist appear with a blue “Ask” button: Choose it, and the AI will try to give you a clear answer to your query.

It works because DuckAssist is actually pulling its data from Wikipedia (as well as Britannica occasionally), and why not: If the AI can find the answer to your question in a series of cited articles on the free encyclopedia, it saves you the trip to Wikipedia yourself, as well as pouring through articles that sourced the same Wikipedia articles DuckAssist found. Plus, as Gizmodo’s Thomas Germain points out, limiting the information to these sources minimizes the issues other AI programs have had, including “hallucinations” and other bizarre behavior.

Screenshot: Jake Peterson

Because of how it’s currently designed, expect the best results from straightforward, fact-based questions, rather than subjective questions the AI would need to formulate an argument for. DuckDuckGo suggests questions like “what is a search engine index” over things like “what is the best search engine?” Good on them for not automatically saying “DuckDuckGo, of course!” In any case, all DuckAssist answers will provide a source, so you can see where it’s pulling the information from.

Like other AI models, DuckAssist isn’t actively connected to the internet. Rather, it’s pulling from a downloaded database of Wikipedia articles. DuckDuckGo says this database is “at most a few weeks old,” so don’t assume it will provide answers to questions that would need context more recent than early February 2023.

The best thing about DuckAssist, however, is that it’s available to everyone right now. Microsoft holds Bing’s AI chatbot behind a waitlist, while Google’s Bard is available to a limited pool of software testers. You can find the DuckAssist beta right now, however, in the iOS, Android, and Mac versions of the DuckDuckGo app, as well as the DuckDuckGo extensions for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. It isn’t available for standard DuckDuckGo search yet, but there are still plenty of ways to try it out today.

If you use these forms of DuckDuckGo, DuckAssist will be on by default. You can disable DuckAssist, but only by disabling “Instant Answers” in settings, which will, as you’d expect, turn off Instant Answers in addition to the DuckAssist.

via Lifehacker https://lifehacker.com

March 8, 2023 at 04:11PM

Caffeine Might Reduce the Risk of Type 2 Diabetes and Obesity

https://gizmodo.com/caffeine-type-2-diabetes-obesity-larsson-woolf-gill-1850225951


New research has found a possible link between having high levels of caffeine in your blood and a reduced risk of high body fat and type 2 diabetes. The authors say that clinical trials should be done to confirm whether calorie-free caffeinated drinks can help prevent these conditions.

Past studies have suggested a positive connection between coffee/caffeine consumption and reduced diabetes risk. But this research has largely relied on observational data, which can only point to a correlation between two factors, not show a direct cause-and-effect link. In this new study from scientists in Sweden and the UK, they decided to take a different approach, using a method called Mendelian randomization. The method tries to test whether having known genetic factors for one thing can directly affect the odds of the second factor.

In this case, the team focused on two common genetic variants that seem to slow down people’s metabolism of caffeine. As a result, these people tend to have higher blood caffeine levels, despite actually drinking less caffeinated beverages on average. Analyzing data from around 10,000 volunteers enrolled in other long-term studies, they tracked whether individuals carrying the variants were less likely to develop type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other risk factors linked to both.

Overall, they found that people genetically predisposed to high blood caffeine levels were indeed less likely to have a high body mass index, high body fat, and type 2 diabetes. They also calculated that about 43% of this lower diabetes risk was attributable to being lower weight. However, they didn’t see any strong link between these variants and a changed risk of cardiovascular disease. The team’s findings were published Tuesday in the BMJ.

There are limitations to the findings, the authors acknowledge. For one, the sample comes almost entirely from people of European ancestry. The use of only two caffeine-related variants in the analysis also weakens any conclusions that can be drawn from it. And while Mendelian randomization is generally better at supporting a causal relationship between two factors than other types of studies, it’s still not a smoking gun —some studies using this same method haven’t found strong evidence between coffee consumption itself and lower diabetes risk.

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That said, there are plausible mechanisms for how caffeine could lower diabetes risk. Caffeine is a stimulant, for instance, which can have short term effects on people’s appetite, and it might also increase people’s ability to burn fat or expend energy. At the very least, the authors say, it’s worth spending more resources to help settle this question.

“Randomized controlled trials are warranted to assess whether non-caloric caffeine-containing beverages might play a role in reducing the risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes,” they wrote.

via Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com

March 14, 2023 at 05:46PM

Uber’s ‘Record My Ride’ Feature Is Expanding to More Cities

https://gizmodo.com/uber-record-my-ride-rideshare-lyft-1850237048


Uber’s Record My Ride feature is expanding to even more cities across the United States. The feature gives both passengers and drivers the ability to easily record audio during a trip in an effort to boost safety for both parties involved.

What is Record My Ride?

Record My Ride is a safety feature from Uber that helps drivers and passengers document what’s happening during a trip if either party becomes uneasy or feels threatened. Using the Uber app, drivers and passengers can record audio to submit to the company in a safety report.

The feature was first piloted in 2019 in different countries in Latin America, before it was brought to select cities in the U.S. at the tail end of 2021. Uber claims that 70% of riders and drivers in Brazil’s Rio De Janeiro reported feeling safer while using the feature. While Uber can’t bring Record My Ride to the entirety of the U.S. since recording laws vary from state to state, the company expanded the feature to Cincinnati, Nashville, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Antonio and Tucson in November 2022.

At the same time, Uber revealed it was working on a dashcam-like video recording feature as part of a pilot program that included drivers in Cincinnati, Louisville, New York City, and Santos and João Pessoa in Brazil.

How do I access Record My Ride?

Record my Ride will only appear when you are a passenger or driver in an active ride. For passengers, tap the blue shield button in the bottom right corner of the map view during your ride to open the Safety Toolkit, and select Record Audio from the menu. Uber will immediately begin recording audio of your trip with your phone. For drivers, the blue shield icon is located in the bottom left of the map view.

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Are there safety concerns with Record My Ride?

Uber says that the audio you record will remain on your phone and will stay encrypted until you file a report to Uber’s Safety Team, and add the audio as an attachment. Likewise, the company says that the passenger will get a notification when their driver begins recording audio, and vice versa, but the dashcam feature apparently sends no such notification. There is also the ongoing concern of a tech company collecting more data from its users to use in some way later on.

“Uber already has this treasure trove of highly personal data about people,” said Camille Fischer, a staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in The New York Times. “When you pair surveillance during those trips, whether it’s over the driver or over the passenger, you are getting a more fine-tuned snapshot of people’s daily lives.”

Uber did not immediately return Gizmodo’s request for comment.

Regardless, Uber’s voyage into video and audio recording are born from reports of violence occurring in rides, in which drivers and passengers are often isolated from outside help. A driver in East Bay, California was brutally attacked by a passenger in early 2023, resulting in a $20,000 hospital bill. Uber is also the focus of a lawsuit waged against the company over reports of women being sexually assaulted by drivers as early as 2014.

via Gizmodo https://gizmodo.com

March 17, 2023 at 12:07PM