Option to disable Quick Answers

Vlad

Recast Good idea!

Vlad

DanielHeath We did based on user feedback, as normally extremely small percentage of search queries are questions or end with a question mark (which triggers this). Which activation is paritcularly annoying so that we can limit the scope of default opt-in activations?

Vlad

taki Can you give an example of questions you are asking, we can definetely limit the scope of auto activations.

j-james

Vlad I think the point is that there is a huge subset of users - myself included - who do not want ChatGPT responses in their results at all, no matter if the scope was limited. It might be useful to hold off on asking for feedback for auto activation scope until the option to disable it has landed (otherwise you're going to get a whole lot of "never").

Vlad

We will be pushing an update by Thursday at the latest to reduce auto-activations and also include an option to disable it completely. Sorry for the inconvenience.

In the meantime add this to custom CSS to hide this completely.

._0_results_summary_box.__0_show {
  display: none;
}

steog32

Vlad Really appreciate the quick response and turnaround time to getting a fix out. I understand it's an easy mistake to make with a small team- product decisions are hard and I can see how this could happen given how noisy the LLM people are (seemingly crypto-bros in 2018/2021 levels these days, sheesh).

Anyways, so long as there's an option to keep all of the LLM features turned off for my account I'll remain a happy Kagi customer. Looking forward to the patch to be out tomorrow.

SBleckley

Even with AI instant answers turned off in search settings, my searches still have animated AI stuff in the way of the actual search results I want

Please make this setting actually turn off the AI quick answers feature -- I don't want it at all, and I especially don't want it animated and moving everything else on the page so I can't get to what I actually want. Thanks!

mazil

SBleckley

I especially don't want it animated and moving everything else on the page so I can't get to what I actually want.

Exactly.

I think in the discord channel, @Vlad mentioned that the option to turn off quick answer would be coming on Thursday?

benamas

mazil i sure hope so or i'm going to quickly find kagi unusable; the animation is the most aggravating part

Browsing6853

Btw, a huge difference from Google's instant answer to Kagi's instant answer is that Google actually shows the snippet where it was taken, most time simply highlighting the paragraph with the answer, which I think it's a much better approach and acceptable for those that doesn't want LLM generated strings.

petterroea

One of the biggest design issues plaguing modern times in my opinion is late-loading content moving around content that is already there.

This is a problem as, especially with fast users, they are probably already about to click something. For them, the layout change can result in clicking on the wrong button. For others, it can result in irritation as the text they read suddenly moves. Anything that interferes with muscle memory/routine is super painful.

When quick answer kicks in, a few seconds late in my case, the layout moves - the search results are pushed downwards. By the time it kicks in I'm already busy reading results and clicking on them, so what I am experiencing is that the link I'm about to click on jumps down a few hundred pixels. Even worse, as quick answer generates new lines, the search results keep being pushed down.

Example query: "how to learn python in 2024"

Quick answer to not be layout breaking (for example, using a fixed-height scrollable box that can be expanded, should the user find the beginning of the answer useful and want to read the rest.

ChristenGottschlich

petterroea

Anything that interferes with muscle memory/routine is super painful.

Oh my god its so nice to hear another human being say this.
Sometimes it feels like im taking crazy pills with all this love lately for ~ dynamic ~ websites and ~ adaptive ~ tools.
Starting to feel less like im using a tool and more like i am the tool.

bv

I also signed up just to give feedback on Quick Answers. They make Kagi unusable and infuriating, and if they are not removed, I cannot be a Kagi customer. I expect Kagi to surface the best of the web, not shovel out AI-generated garbage.

Vlad

j-james I see that now. Going into this we had a very strong signal that users wanted this, there is a very highly upvoted feature to even include it for every single query https://kagifeedback.org/d/1892-option-to-have-quick-answers-always-on

Sort of shows perils of user driven feedback development and you can not make every PM decision right.

We enabled this for probably less than 0.01% of all queries but this seems to have provoked strong reaction against it that we previously did not hear from users (I would venture to guess that inclusion of 'how' queries caused most of the dissatisfaction).

No worries we will fix this, just need a day or two.

Browsing6853

Vlad

Vlad Sort of shows perils of user driven feedback development and you cna not make every PM decision right.

I think it just wasn't implemented correctly. IIRC the "Quick Peeks" feature was implemented and disabled by default because it was a significant addition to the results page. The automatic trigger of quick answer should've been implemented in same way - first add the toggle button, them enable/disable it for everyone,

j-james

Vlad Yeah - I'd say part of it too is that users actively engaging with Kagi are interested in what Kagi is working on, which right now, has been LLM stuff for the better part of a year. I was way more active on here back in the beta, but with ranking and lenses and bangs Kagi is pretty much feature complete for me, sans a https://web.archive.org/web/20170404173014/https://duckduckhack.com/ kind of system.

CrunchyFritos

Vlad Do you guys have a beta-testing program? I would happily sign up to test out new features before they are rolled out to check for bugs / give basic feedback. I know that in theory Assistant is in "beta" for Ultimate users, but maybe a separate opt-in program for users willing to test out new features that might disrupt existing workflows? Maybe some of the very strong responses here might have gotten caught, though maybe the extra admin overhead isn't worth it. Just a thought.

Vlad

Browsing6853 Just fyi Quick Peeks was enabled for everyone by default too.

wrkyle

At the risk of "piling on", I hate this and one of the reasons I pay for Kagi is to have a search engine that isn't employing LLM-generated, zero-provenance search. Not being able to turn it off was also an unwelcome design choice. I don't need or want search tools that train my brain to seek out and uncritically accept unsourced answers to questions. Principles aside, what does this add to the functionality of search? Is LLM-generated text better than sourced answers? Why add this to your product rather than finding ways to surface more authoritative, accurate pages and highlight those answers? Does this make your product better or is it about cultural currency and "keeping up with the big players" even if they're making bad decisions to follow the hype train.

Vlad

wrkyle

Yes users want this. See https://kagifeedback.org/d/1892-option-to-have-quick-answers-always-on

Also many shared they love it today

The challange is that not all users do. This is why we are very careful when we roll things like this out, and less than 0.01% of queries (my guess) were affected by this.

The proper way to impact product roadmap is to voice your opinion like you just did. This sounded like a good idea but was probably overexposed. We are not chasing any hype, we are very user-centric, and sometimes things need a bit of time for equilibrium.

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