I’ve been using this search engine and I have to say I’m absolutely in love with it.

Search results are great, Google level even. Can’t tell you how happy I am after trying multiple privacy oriented engines and always feeling underwhelmed with them.

Have you tried it? What are your thoughts on it?

  • sudneo@lemmy.world
    1·
    9 months ago

    The manifesto is actually a future vision. And again, you are interpreting it in your own way.

    At the same time, you are completely ignoring:

    • what the product already does
    • the features they actually invested to build
    • their documentation in which they stress and emphasize on privacy as a core value
    • their privacy policy in which they legally bind themselves to such commitment.

    Because obviously who cares of facts, right? You have your own interpretation of a sentence which starts with “in the future we will have” and that counts more than anything.

    Also, can you please share to me the quote where I say that I need to blindly trust the privacy policy? Thanks.

    Because I remember to have said in various comments that the privacy policy is a legally binding document, and that I can make a report to a data protection authority if I suspect they are violating them, so that they will be audited. Also, guess what! The manifesto is not a legally binding document that they need to respond of, the privacy policy is. Nobody can hold them accountable if “in the future there will not be” all that stuff that are mentioned in the manifesto, but they are accountable already today for what they put in the privacy policy.

    Do you see the difference?

    • LWD@lemm.ee
      1·
      9 months ago

      No, I’m engaging in a good faith effort to find the corporation’s words, while you downplay and reinterpret them at every turn.

      I know you won’t bother to look, but for my own personal amusement, Kagi Corp is clear in page after page they care about AI not privacy. Here’s a third page demonstrating this:

      Kagi has long heritage in AI, in fact we started as kagi.ai in 2018 and we’ve previously published products, research and even a sci-fi story about AI. While generative AI opens a new paradigm of search and a vast search space of queries that never previously existed we have taken special care to ensure a thoughtful user experience guided by this philosophy of AI integration

      • what the corporation did: AI stuff
      • the features they actually invested to build: AI integration

      And this is rather ironic too:

      At the same time, you are completely ignoring… their privacy policy in which they legally bind themselves to such commitment…

      Also, can you please share to me the quote where I say that I need to blindly trust the privacy policy?

      • sudneo@lemmy.world
        1·
        9 months ago

        You are really moving the goal post eh

        Developing AI feature does not mean anything in itself. None of the AI features they built do anything at all in a personalized way. For sure they seem very invested into integrating AI in their product, but so far no data is used, and all the AI features are simply summarizers and research assistants. What is this supposed to prove?

        I will make it simpler anyway:

        What they wrote in a manifesto is a vague expression of what will happen in a non-specified future. If the whole AI fad will fade in a year, it won’t happen. In addition, we have no idea of what specifically they are going to build, we have no idea of what the impact on privacy is, what are the specific implementation choices they will take and many other things. Without all of this, your dystopian interpretation is purely arbitrary.

        And this is rather ironic too:

        Ironic how? Saying that a document is binding doesn’t mean blindly trusting it, it means that I know the power it holds, and it means it gives the power to get their ass audited and potentially fined on that basis if anybody doesn’t trust them.

        Your attempt to mess with the meaning of my sentences is honestly gross. Being aware of the fact that a company is accountable has nothing do to with blind trust.

        Just to sum it up, your arguments so far are that:

        • they mention a “future” in which AI will be personalized and can act as our personal assistant, using data, in the manifesto.
        • they integrated AI features in the current offering

        This somehow leads you to the conclusion that they are building some dystopian nightmare in which they get your data and build a bubble around you.

        My arguments are that:

        • the current AI features are completely stateless and don’t depend on user data in any way (this capability is not developed in general and they use external models).
        • the current features are very user-centric and the users have complete agency in what they can customize, hence we can only assume that similar agency will be implemented in AI features (in opposition to data being collected passively).
        • to strengthen the point above, their privacy policy is not only great, but it’s also extremely clear in terms of implications of data collected. We can expect that if AI features “personalized” will come up, they will maintain the same standard in terms of clarity, so that users are informed exactly on the implication of disclosing their data. This differentiate the situation from Facebook, where the privacy policy is a book.
        • the company business model also gives hope. With no other customer to serve than the users, there are no substantial incentive for kagi to somehow get data for anything else. If they can be profitable just by having users paying, then there is no economical advantage in screwing the users (in fact, the opposite). This is also clearly written in their doc, and the emphasis on the business model and incentive is also present in the manifesto.

        The reality is: we don’t know. It might be that they will build something like you say, but the current track record doesn’t give me any reason to think they will. I, and I am sure a substantial percentage of their user base, use their product specifically because they are good and because they are user-centric and privacy focused. If they change posture, I would dump them in a second, and a search engine is not inherently something that locks you in (like an email). At the moment they deliver, and I am all-in for supporting businesses that use revenue models that are in opposition to ad-driven models and don’t rely on free labor. I do believe that economic and systemic incentive are the major reasons why companies are destroying user-privacy, I don’t thing there is any inherent evil. That’s why I can’t really understand how a business which depends on users paying (kagi) can be compared to one that depends on advertisers paying (meta), where users (their data) are just a part of a product.

        Like, even if we assume that what’s written in the manifesto comes to life, if the data is collected by the company and only, exclusively, used to customize the AI in the way I want (not to tune it to sell me shit I don’t need), within the scope I need, with the data I choose to give, with full awareness of the implication, where is the problem? This is not a dystopia. The dystopia is if google builds the same tool and tunes it automatically so that it benefits whoever pays google (not users, but the ones who want to sell you shit). If a tool is truly making my own interests and the company interest is simply that I find the tool useful, without additional goals (ad impressions, visits to pages, product sold), then that’s completely acceptable in my view.

        And now I will conclude this conversation, because I said what I had to, and I don’t see progress.

        • LWD@lemm.ee
          1·
          9 months ago

          You’re right. We aren’t getting anywhere. I’m trying to explain how 2 + 2 = 4, but you keep insisting it’s zero.

          Kagi Dot AI, with a past, present and future in AI, is the first part of the equation.

          Private data consumption and regurgitation, which Kagi is allegedly not injecting into its AI right now, is the other part.

          Look at them side by side and you see what the company wants to do, clear as day. But for some reason, you repeatedly insist there’s nothing there.

          Like, even if we assume that what’s written in the manifesto comes to life, if the data is collected by the company and only, exclusively, used to customize the AI in the way I want

          To be clear, you want a venture capital corporation to keep you in your filter bubble regarding your political beliefs, your corporate brand choices, your political beliefs, your philosophical beliefs, etc?

          The dystopia is already here for you.

          And even if you feel comfortable feeding all this private data into a soulless corporation, and you’re not worried about data breaches, why would you evangelize that kind of product on a privacy forum?

          • sudneo@lemmy.world
            1·
            9 months ago

            To be clear, you want a venture capital corporation to keep you in your filter bubble regarding your political beliefs, your corporate brand choices, your political beliefs, your philosophical beliefs, etc?

            Thankfully, I kagi is not a VC-funded corp. The latest investment round was for 670k, pennies, from 42 investors, which means an average of less than 20k/investor (they also mention that most are kagi users too but who knows).

            Also, it depends on what it means “being kept in a filter bubble”. If I build my own bubble according to my own criteria (I don’t want to see blogs filled with trackers, I want articles from reputable sources - I.e. what I consider reputable, if I am searching for code I only want rust because that’s what I am using right now, etc.) and I have the option to choose when to look outside, then yes, I think it’s OK. We all already do that anyway, if I see an article from fox news I won’t even open it, if on the same topic I see something from somewhere else. That said, there are times where I can choose to read fox news specifically to see what conservatives think.

            The crux of it all is: who is in charge? And what happens with that data? If the answers are “me” and “nothing”, then it’s something I consider acceptable. It doesn’t mean I would use it or that I would use it for everything.

            evangelize that kind of product on a privacy forum?

            First, I am not evangelizing anything. That product doesn’t even exist, I am simply speculating on its existence and the potential scenarios.

            Second: privacy means that the data is not accessed or used by unintended parties and is not misused by the intended ones. Focus on unintended. Privacy does not mean that no data is gathered in any case, even though this is often the best way to ensure there is no misuse. This is also completely compatible with the idea that if I can choose which data to give, and whether I want to give it at all (and of course deleting it), and that data is not used for anything else than what I want it to be used for, then my privacy is completely protected.