Gabriel Weinberg's Blog

At DuckDuckGo, our approach to AI is to only make AI features that are useful, private, and optional. If you don’t want AI, that’s cool with us. We have settings to turn off all of our AI features, and even a new setting to help you avoid AI-generated images in our search results. At the same time, we know a lot of people do want to use AI if it is actually useful and private (myself included). Ou...

Standard of living doesn’t have a strictly agreed-upon definition, but for the sake of anchoring on something, let’s use “the level of income, comforts, and services available to an individual, community, or society” ( Wikipedia ). Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, that is, the average economic output per person in a country, is often used as a proxy metric to compare the standard of living...

The magic of chatbots is that they make it seem like you’re chatting with a real person. But the default personality of this “person” isn’t one I particularly enjoy talking to, and in many cases I find downright annoying. Based on feedback from duck.ai users—who rely on our service for private access to popular chatbots—I know I’m not alone. What people want in a chatbot’s personality varies widel...

The decade surrounding the Internet boom saw a marked increase in U.S. total factor productivity (TFP) growth—the economic efficiency gains beyond just adding more workers or capital—similar to higher levels seen before 1973. However, it then declined again from 2005 onward back to doldrums levels, which brings us to the present. Now, people are starting to debate a similar potential AI productivi...

A provision in the “ Big Beautiful Bill ” (the massive federal spending and policy package currently being negotiated) aims to stop all state-level AI regulation for the next ten years. Now, I’m not anti-AI. My company (DuckDuckGo) offers our own private chatbot service at Duck.ai , we now generate millions of anonymous AI-assisted answers daily for our private search engine, and we are working on...

Every decision rests on assumptions. At minimum, you’re assuming the options you’re considering are actually all of your options. This set of options is, in turn, based on a set of assumed facts, which is, in turn, based on even more assumptions about how the world works. I’ve seen this pattern repeatedly: teams spend hours debating the details of Option A versus Option B, only to discover they ne...

In a country currently known for deep political divisions, some issues still garner supermajority agreement, yet nothing gets done about them. To me, these issues simultaneously represent hope and despair: * Hope—yes, we can agree on some important things. * Despair—uh oh, our widespread agreement isn’t translating into actual change. In other words, the existence of issues with durable, supermajo...

I do not yet have a well-formed opinion on the net impact of AI on job loss across different time scales. Will it be a large, net negative, or will it be close to net neutral, similar to previous technology cycles? “Expert” estimates are all over the place , and while there is little job loss directly attributable to AI right now, circumstantial evidence is accumulating . That said, I believe it i...

Previously, I gave an overview of eleven justifications for why public science funding is way too low : (1) longevity—living longer, (2) defense—wars of the future, (3) returns —pays for itself, (4) prosperity—long-term driver of productivity growth, (5) innovation—better everday products, (6) resilience—insurance for future calamities, (7) jobs—creates some now, and then better jobs in the future...

AI backlash is rising—I see it every day in DuckDuckGo user feedback. That’s why our AI features ( Search Assist and Duck.ai ) are private, useful, and optional . Concern alone won’t flood the streets—but if AI wipes out paychecks fast , and Washington stalls, more sustained protests and strikes could follow. An April 2025 Pew Research report found widespread AI concern across various topics—jobs,...

Putting aside whether you or I believe in the potential benefits of widespread tariffs, I found this recent Gallup report fascinating regarding how Americans perceive their tolerance for the “short-term pain, long-term gain” tariff narrative. The chart below from Gallup shows that just 26% of U.S. adults would accept any disruption for more than a year. That leaves one-third of Republicans, 28% of...

Cutting federal research funding is extremely short-sighted, but the previous funding levels were also short-sighted. I think those previous levels were off by something like 3x. There are so many compelling and synergistic justifications as to why, that it can be overwhelming to reason (and write!) about. So, in this post, I’m going to list ten justifications out at a high level, and plan to expl...

I’ve always been drawn to characters with “rules.” I’ve been noodling some rules over the past few years myself, on making good decisions. Subscribe for free to receive new posts. Rule 1: Reality is always more complicated. I prefer the more general framing, but this is also phrased as “ the map is not the territory ” because every map is an imperfect representation of what it represents. For exam...

I’ve been trying to heed the call to prepare for the powerful AI that is coming . But, is it coming soon, like in 2027 (see AI 2027 ), or significantly later, like in 2045 (see AI as Normal Technology ) ? Either way, we should prepare , but knowing whether it is coming in years or decades would make a huge difference in that preparation. Subscribe for free to receive new posts. The pieces referenc...