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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

#301

Post by amelius »

cornholio wrote: post #158
andy99 wrote: post #70

Earlier 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…

> 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.

But if users really wanted agenda-free products and services, then those would win right? At least according to free market theory.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#302

Post by kakuri »

railka wrote: post #153
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 am a regular Firefox user; it is literally the tool I use most often during my working hours. I like it more than Chrome. Firefox is steadily losing market share, and any attempts to do something about it are met with negativity. The 2-4% of users who use it care about their privacy. But they are not being deprived of it; the AI tab is optional, and no one is removing the regular tab. (Of course, it would be better…

I am a frontend dev and use Firefox as much as I can. But I can't use it for development. Firefox's dev tools need to be better. I use Chrome for development because Chrome has great dev tools.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#303

Post by orbital-decay »

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.

That's a ridiculous hyperbole. Translation and search alone are examples of wildly successful applications of generative AI that a lot of people actually want because it makes the experience qualitatively better. This is pretty evident if you look at normal people shifting to ChatGPT and other AI-powered search from the engines like Google. Recent AI mode in Google is a desperate attempt to stay relevant.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#304

Post by whitehexagon »

Even if LLMs seem to have reached their limits, and are no longer on the feature path towards AGI, I have a fundamental (possibly irrational) dislike for anything labeled AI, just in case this does become a stepping stone towards AGI.

On this principle I will not make use of any service, or buy any product, that associates itself with AI, and inserts itself into my life without invitation.

In fact, I would like to see a basic human right that allows us sheeps to opt out of anything AI related, or anything with forced advertising or digital currency for that matter.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#306

Post by kbelder »

RansomStark wrote: post #25
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.

In firefox yeah! I use it often. I have it connected to a local Gemma model running in ollama and use it to quickly summarize webpages, nobody really wants to read 15 minutes worth of personal anecdotes before getting to that one paragraph that actually has relevant information, and for finding information within a page, kinda like ctrl-f on steroids. The machine is sitting there anyway and the extra cost in electric…

An AI specifically customized to pull the recipe out of long rambling cooking blog posts would be great. I'd use that regularly.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#307

Post by DaSHacka »

metabagel wrote: post #299
DeusExMachina wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a Firefox user, but I am baffled by the fact that every time I see news about it is because its developers are trying to push something that users dislike. All the comments I read always highlight how they keep wasting time and money instead of working on more important things. My impression is that this is the reason why they keep losing market share. I never see any positive news about Firefox or Mozilla,…

I don't understand why anyone would choose Chrome over Firefox. I get that it's performant, but it's developed by a dominant advertising company. Why would you trust Chrome if you care about your privacy? Firefox is excellent, despite the grumbling of people who want it to have a narrower focus (which I'm not disagreeing with).

> if you care about your privacy?

I think you just answered your own questions.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#308

Post by topaz0 »

Lots of commenters replying with 'actually some people want this', or 'actually I want this'.

Two points on that. First, OP addresses this by noting that when mozilla asked the community what they wanted, the replies from the community were overwhelmingly opposed to any sort of AI integration in the browser. That at least indicates that the people who are actively following firefox development are substantially against this kind of feature. It's not just "I and the people I talk to don't want this" -- clearly a very important subset of firefox power users don't want it.

In other words, the people that are actively going out of their way to choose firefox now, would actively dislike having the browser move in this direction. Sure, maybe the idea is that there are people out there who are longing to be one fewer click away from chatgpt, who is actively choosing their browser based on having access to such things... to which I say... really??? But more to the point, that's probably not the kind of user who will choose firefox over whatever corporate-captured competitor is adding chatbots to their browser yesterday.

Second, my personal position, which seems to be echoed by some other commenters, is that, whether or not people do want this, they shouldn't want it. It is bad for users and for the world to have it available, it will make the web worse as sites are rewritten to cater to the bots, and it's going to have to be ripped out in a few years anyway when it becomes clear that the true costs of this stuff are unsustainable.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#309

Post by hooverd »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #16

I do, the "go to a website to use AI" era is taking too long, I want full integration. I don't want to use websites or apps, I want to ask for things using human language and get a human-like response. I tire of all these interfaces.

try asking a person?

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#310

Post by DaSHacka »

benatkin wrote: post #258
DeusExMachina wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a Firefox user, but I am baffled by the fact that every time I see news about it is because its developers are trying to push something that users dislike. All the comments I read always highlight how they keep wasting time and money instead of working on more important things. My impression is that this is the reason why they keep losing market share. I never see any positive news about Firefox or Mozilla,…

Amen. Friends don't let friends use Firefox in the manner prescribed by Mozilla in its current state. It's horrid. I have LibreWolf and Chrome installed, but not Firefox, and I like part of Firefox in spite of, not because of, the rest of Mozilla. I'd be interested in Ladybird except they threaten to use Swift.

Exactly this.

I use librewolf, but for non-tech savvy, relatives where that would not be an option, I'm not exactly gonna recommend barebones vanilla Firefox either.

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