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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

#281

Post by toomuchtodo »

philipallstar wrote: post #260
cornholio wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no longer building software for their users but as vehicles to push some agenda All companies push an agenda all the time, and their agenda always is: market dominance, profitability, monopoly and rent extraction, rinse and repeat into other markets, power maximization for their owners and executives. The freak stampede of all these tech giants to shove AI down everybody's throat just shows that they perceive the t…

> All companies push an agenda all the time, and their agenda always is: market dominance, profitability, monopoly and rent extraction, rinse and repeat into other markets, power maximization for their owners and executives. I'll bear that in mind the next time I'm getting a haircut. How do you think Bob's Barbers is going to achieve all of that?

It was a sloppy statement, but is broadly speaking, true. For overwhelming citations, https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... (HN Search of posts from Matt Stoller's BIG Newsletter, which focuses on corporate monopolies and power in the US).

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/about

> The Problem: America is in a monopoly crisis. A monopoly is, at its core, a private government that sets the terms, services, and wages in a market, like how Mark Zuckerberg structures discourse in social networking. Every monopoly is a mini-dictatorship over a market. And today, there are monopolies everywhere. They are in big markets, like search engines, medicine, cable, and shipping. They are also in small ones, like mail sorting software and cheerleading. Over 75% of American industries are more consolidated today than they were decades ago.

> Unregulated monopolies cause a lot of problems. They raise prices, lower wages, and move money from rural areas to a few gilded cities. Dominant firms don’t focus on competing, they focus on corrupting our politics to protect their market power. Monopolies are also brittle, and tend to put all their eggs in one basket, which results in shortages. There is a reason everyone hates monopolies, and why we’ve hated them for hundreds of years.

https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2021/09/17/graph-theory-o... (Food consolidation)

https://followthemoney.com/infographic-the-u-s-media-is-cont... (Media consolidation)

https://www.kearney.com/industry/energy/article/how-utilitie... (US electric utilities)

https://aglawjournal.wp.drake.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/6... [pdf] (Agriculture consolidation)

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/interactive-major-tech-acqu... (Big Tech consolidation)

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#282

Post by satvikpendem »

sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #269
satvikpendem wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try Parakeet, it's more state of the art these days. There are others too like Meta's omnilingual one.

Ah yes, one of the standard replies whenever anyone mentions a way that an AI thing fails: "You're still using [X]? Well of course, that's not state of the art, you should be using [Y]." You don't actually state whether you believe Parakeet is susceptible to the same class of mistakes...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I haven't seen those issues myself in my usage, it's just a suggestion, no need to be sarcastic about it.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#284

Post by natnatenathan »

The reason I don't want AI integrated into my browser (or really anything else) is that the mental model for big tech moved from "providing value" to "capturing value" about 15 years ago, and I expect they will try to use this integration in an attempt to build a layer between the customer and all downstream services (stores, banks, information) so they can extract some form of tax on every transaction (ads, micro-fees), all while consolidating data about me to create new sources of revenue. I am one of those 'bright minds' who has wasted their talent improving marketing conversion by 0.001% instead of working to cure cancer. (Let's be honest, improvements are way better than 0.001%, I am good at my job).

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#285

Post by jajuuka »

isodev wrote: post #267
notepad0x90 wrote: post #110

I think "nobody i know" and nobody are different things. Mozilla wants more firefox users. there are "AI browsers" and ai integrated browsing is becoming more and more the norm. Mozilla is doing the right thing here, the features are there but unobtrusive. But down the road, I fully expect Mozilla to do whatever they have to do to remain in the game. Their small market share is hurting the entire internet, they can't…

> "AI browsers" and ai integrated browsing is becoming more and more the norm Not really, outside influencers looking to capture the next hot thing (like Mozilla) and tech-bros, there is no living soul on this planet that wants or is trying to normalise AI browsers.

Another example of "nobody I know" and not nobody.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#287

Post by a_t48 »

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.

Gemini in GCP for SQL queries is mildly useful, as I’m rusty and forget how to write but generally know enough not to run a query that mutates the db.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#288

Post by data-ottawa »

andy99 wrote: post #70
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…

Even when I do try them I find myself let down.

I don’t know what version of Gemini they’re stuffing into Google products, but sheets, docs, and colab/data science agent are all bad experiences.

If you aren’t putting something comparable to good paid models into your product then don’t bother putting that feature out.

Once you train your users that your ai is half baked junk they’re not coming back to waste their time with it. It’s 10x as frustrating than regular product failures.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#289

Post by gspencley »

jve wrote: post #43
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.

> Does anyone want AI in anything? I want in Text to speech (TTS) engines, transliteration/translation and... routing tickets to correct teams/persons would also be awesome :) (Classification where mistakes can easily be corrected) Anyways, we used TTS engine before openai - it was AI based. It HAD to be AI based as even for a niche language some people couldn't tell it was a computer. Well from some phrases you can…

ML has been around for ages. Email spam filters are one of the oldest examples.

These days when the term "AI" is thrown around the person is usually talking about large language models, or generative adversarial neural networks for things like image generation etc.

Classification is a wonderful application of ML that long predates LLMs. And LLMs have their purpose and niche too, don't get me wrong. I use them all the time. But AI right now is a complete hype train with companies trying to shove LLMs into absolutely anything and everything. Although I use LLMs, I have zero interest in an "AI PC" or an "AI Web Browser" any more than I have a need for an AI toaster oven. Thank god companies have finally gotten the message about "smart appliances." I wish "dumb televisions" were more common, but for a while it was looking like you couldn't buy a freakin' dishwasher that didn't have WIFI and an app and a bunch of other complexity-adding "features" that are neither required or desired by most customers.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#290

Post by sjsdaiuasgdia »

satvikpendem wrote: post #282
sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, one of the standard replies whenever anyone mentions a way that an AI thing fails: "You're still using [X]? Well of course, that's not state of the art, you should be using [Y]." You don't actually state whether you believe Parakeet is susceptible to the same class of mistakes...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I haven't seen those issues myself in my usage, it's just a suggestion, no need to be sarcastic about it.

It's an extremely common goalpost-moving pattern on HN, and it adds little to the conversation without actually addressing how or whether the outcome would be better.
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