I don't want AI anywhere, but it seems I cannot open any of my familiar applications without having to stumble over their new, stupid "AI" button. It has become quite infuriating.
I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
231–240 of 782 posts
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are projects that will run Whisper or another transcription service locally on your computer, which has great quality. For whatever reason, Google chooses not to use their highest quality transcription models on YouTube, maybe due to cost.
I use Whisper running locally for automated transcription of many hours of audio on a daily basis. For the most part, Whisper does much better than stuff I've tried in the past like Vosk. That said, it makes a somewhat annoying error that I never really experienced with others. When the audio is low quality for a moment, it might misinterpret a word. That's fine, any speech recognition system will do that. The proble…
Try Parakeet, it's more state of the art these days. There are others too like Meta's omnilingual one.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
browser.ml.chat.enabled set to false browser.ml.chat.menu set to false browser.ml.chat.page set to false browser.ml.chat.page.footerBadge set to false browser.ml.chat.page.menuBadge set to false browser.ml.chat.shortcuts set to false browser.ml.chat.sidebar set to false browser.ml.enable set to false browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled set to false browser.ml.pageAssist.enabled set to false browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabl…
This is just as user friendly as the rest of the firefox configuration. I can't recommend it to anyone in good faith anymore.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
That's where I'm at with these. I don't personally care if a product includes AI, it's the pushiness of it that's annoying. That, and the inordinate amount of effort being devoted to it. It's just hilarious at this point that Microsoft, for example, is moving heaven and earth to put AI into everything office, and yet Excel still automatically converts random things into dates (the "ability" to turn it off they added…
Exactly! I honestly can't remember the last time my window start menu search bar functioned as it's supposed to. For multiple laptops across more than 5 years i have to hit the windows key three to 7 times to get it to let me type into it. It either doesn't open, doesn't show anything, or doesn't let me type into it.
I mean, c'mon, its literally called the fucking windows key and it doesn't work. As per standard Microsoft it's a feature that worked perfectly on all versions before cortana (their last "ai assistant" type push), i wonder what new core functionalities of their product they're going to fuck up and never fix.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Does anyone want AI in anything? Yeah, they do. Go talk to anyone who isn't in a super-online bubble such as HN or Bsky or a Firefox early-adopter program. They're all using it, all the time, for everything. I don't like it either, but that's the reality.
Way off. I've polled about this (informally) as well. Non-technical people think it's another thing they have to learn and do not want to (except for those who have been conditioned into constant pursuit of novelty, but that is not a picture of mental health or stability for anyone). They want technology to work for them, not to constantly be urged into full-time engagement with their [de]vices. They are already prea…
> I've polled about this (informally) as well.
This is kinda like how if you ask everyone how often they eat McDonald's, everyone will say never or rarely. But they still sell a billion burgers each year :) Assuming you're not polling your Bsky buddies, I suspect these people are using AI tools a lot more than they admit or possibly even know. Auto-generated summaries, text generation, image editing, and conversation prompts all get a ton of use.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#236Actually, AI in edge is not bad.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#237Does 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.
Many years ago now, Mozilla hired an adtech exec to run the show and I arrived at the conclusion that Firefox would be staffed by for-profit thinkers in direct conflict with their non-profit foundation. That’s the moment I stopped donating. I daily drive Orion as even though Kagi is for profit, they have managed to keep trash out of their free version.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#238I wish these features were added as extensions that you could uninstall vs being baked in.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#239Does 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.
For me, it's exactly what you said...asking specific questions. That's what I use search engines for and much of the time I'm online, it's asking questions and seeking answers. And, as near as I can tell, AI does that very well and very fast.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#240Mozilla spending their limited resources on something so absurd and irrelevant seems extremely strange.
People use Firefox because they want privacy respecting software with good customizability. What Mozilla should be focusing is making their "vanilla" experience as good as possible and keep working on tools which further help user privacy.
Firefox should be performant, compatible, well polished and have the best privacy tools available. Focusing on anything else will make it just a worse version of another browser.
To be honest this makes me really question the leadership of Mozilla. Who is deciding this? And what are these decisions based on. I doubt that it is actual user research.