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I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

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Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#61

Post by BearOso »

aquova wrote: post #23
transcriptase wrote: post #10

Nobody wants anything from Mozilla except Firefox/Thunderbird to be high-performance alternatives to Chrome/Outlook with fewer restrictions on extensions. That’s it. The rest is just activism and kids playing in a sandbox with non-profit money to pad out their resume with whatever topical keywords might land them their next gig.

I see this sentiment a lot, but I never agree with it. Sure, some of their projects seem very odd for them to lead, but given that they are completely reliant on their competitor for cash -- a revenue source that has been threatened several times by anti-trust cases against Google -- they should be looking to branch out. Firefox alone won't pay the bills, so they need to try and find some other revenue source. Plus,…

The amount of money they get from Google is vastly more than it takes to hire a few dozen people full-time to develop a web browser and email program.

People in the organization are trying to use what's left of the name recognition and all that money to benefit their own initiatives.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#62

Post by cratermoon »

nerdjon wrote: post #56
everdrive wrote: post #4

Does anyone want AI in anything? I can see the value of navigating to an LLM and asking specific questions, but generally speaking I don't want that just running / waiting on my machine as I open a variety of applications. It's a huge waste of resources and for most normal people is an edge case.

Yes and no and this is the problem with the current marketing around AI. I very much do want what used to be just called ML that was invisible and actually beneficial. Autocorrect, smart touch screen keyboards, music recommendations, etc. But the problem is that all of that stuff is now also just being called "AI" left and right. That being said I think what most people think of when they say "AI" is really not as be…

Nobody wants what's currently marketed as "AI" everywhere.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#63

Post by berkes »

chironjit wrote: post #46

I connected Claude to Firefox's ai pane and honestly I feel that this a good middle ground. I don't want an AI browser but I appreciate being able to have ai access specific pages when I have questions. My only beef is they've basically put Claude's webpage on a side pane, with all the issues of a squished webpage. I also think having a separate mode is really the best middle ground between an all spying ai-browser a…

> Claude's webpage on a side pane, with all the issues of a squished webpage.

I have used that feature for a few weeks now and find it utterly useless.

Partly because it is squished. But mostly because it offers no value over just having a tab open with Claude (or in my case Mistral).

The extra buttons (summarize) and integration (context menu) hardly ever work (pages and selections are often too large for gpt, copilot, mistral or even claude and the sidebar just gives an error) but even if they did: what problem do these extra buttons and integrations solve? Am I missing something?

Do note that I would love integration the other way around: to have an AI agent (through an MCP for example) drive my firefox. Safely, contained, etc etc. I am not an AI luddite. I just find the firefox sidebar offering no value at all.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#67

Post by vidarh »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #29
Adrig wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mom recently praised the brave AI summary of a webpage so who knows, the usage might be higher than we think.

I used to hate Twitter when it first launched because I thought short form text was stupid, now I see everything will become summaries with AI and nobody will ever read anything meaningful.

There is plenty of text for which a good summary will have a far higher ratio of meaning to words than the original.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#68

Post by _verandaguy »

JohnFen wrote: post #5

Mozilla's gonna Mozilla. I don't want this, but at the same time I think people are overreacting. If Mozilla remains true to their word and this is an opt-in sort of thing, it's hard for me to get too worked up about it. I can just ignore it.

It's specifically been opt-out: `browser.ml.enable` is set to `true` in `about:config` in recent versions, and even disabling that doesn't get rid of the "AI assistant" option in the right-click dropdown menu.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#69

Post by mythrwy »

everdrive wrote: post #42
giancarlostoro wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to hate Twitter when it first launched because I thought short form text was stupid, now I see everything will become summaries with AI and nobody will ever read anything meaningful.

It could be something of an historical return to form; a small class of properly educated people and then the wider, semi-literate masses.

Communicating in pictographs

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#70

Post by andy99 »

everdrive wrote: post #4

Does anyone want AI in anything? I can see the value of navigating to an LLM and asking specific questions, but generally speaking I don't want that just running / waiting on my machine as I open a variety of applications. It's a huge waste of resources and for most normal people is an edge case.

The existence of the features doesn’t bother me. It’s the constant nagging about them. I can’t use a google product without being harassed to the point of not being able to work by offers to “help me write” or whatever.

Having the feature on a menu somewhere would be fine. The problem is the confluence of new features now becoming possible, and companies no longer building software for their users but as vehicles to push some agenda. Now we’re seeing this in action.

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