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Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features

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Re: Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features

#111

Post by nemomarx »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #90
gigel82 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to live in your world for a bit... I can't imagine any future where having AI in your browser is a net positive for any user. It sounds like an absolute dystopian privacy and security nightmare.

Why? Imagine you have an AI button. When you click it, the locally running LLM gets a copy of the web site in the context window, and you get to ask it a prompt, e.g. "summarize this". Imagine the browser asks you at some point, whether you want to hear about new features. The buttons offered to you are "FUCK OFF AND NEVER, EVER BOTHER ME AGAIN", "Please show me a summary once a month", "Show timely, non-modal notifi…

That last one sounds like a lot of churn and resources for little results? You're not really making them sound compelling compared to just blocking click bait sites with a normal extension somehow. And it could also be an extension users install and configure - why a pop up offering it to me, and why built into the browser that directly?

Re: Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features

#112

Post by seltzered_ »

smlavine wrote: post #67
School-Cotton wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> simple, obvious answer to the effect of "yes, we understand extensions are a core feature of our browser and we plan to fully support extensions on Fenix and won't consider it done until we do". Instead, they talked about whitelisting a handful of extensions, and took three years from shipping Fenix as stable before they had a broad open extension ecosystem up and running again. That answer is not as obvious to me…

I use Firefox on Android perhaps entirely because it supports uBlock Origin and my other extensions. I would guess that of people that would ever go out of their way to use a non-Chrome browser on Android , the fraction who care about extensions is pretty significant.

On a different tack, I feel like I went out of my way to use Firefox (and Firefox Focus) on iOS and was thankful they had them during a time where everything had to use the safari renderer. IIRC Firefox Focus even had an ad-block extension that worked on safari

Re: Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features

#113

Post by netule »

bondarchuk wrote: post #55
butz wrote: post #40

Firefox should release a separate build - "base", "core", "classic" - clearly, I am not a marketing person, but idea behind it, that this is only a browser without any extra features added. No "AI", no studies, no account sync. Only bare minimum browser, that allows user to do their internet things and, if they ever desire, will install all extra bells and whistles as extensions. No need to agree to any EULA either (…

For example at the moment multi-account containers is a plugin. I needed it and installed the plugin and it's fine.

It kind of sucks that this isn’t a core feature of the browser, but the AI stuff will be. At least Firefox sync is good enough to sync extensions.

Re: Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features

#115

Post by jm4 »

yoavm wrote: post #14
joduplessis wrote: post #11

> We've been calling it the AI kill switch internally. I'm sure it'll ship with a less murderous name, but that's how seriously and absolutely we're taking this. Honestly, is anybody reading what's getting written anymore? If it gets taken seriously it would ship with an enable-AI button, not the other way round.

I love threads about Mozilla. New CEO says he's not going to remove adblockers, people suspect him for planning to remove adblockers. Mozilla says they'll add a killswitch for all AI features (so that the tiny but vocal anti-AI minority will be happy), and people blame them for not having it as an enable-switch. Whatever they do, they simply cannot win. I'm personally starting to suspect the main issue with Mozilla i…

The anti-AI people think they are in the majority. They could be, but I suspect that's not the case. I would be surprised if many in the anti-AI crowd could even point to the specific features of the devices and software they use daily that fall under the "AI" umbrella. Meanwhile, regular people are increasingly turning to chatbots instead of search engines. It seems clear we are at peak hype, but this stuff is here to stay.

Re: Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features

#117

Post by lenerdenator »

yoavm wrote: post #14
joduplessis wrote: post #11

> We've been calling it the AI kill switch internally. I'm sure it'll ship with a less murderous name, but that's how seriously and absolutely we're taking this. Honestly, is anybody reading what's getting written anymore? If it gets taken seriously it would ship with an enable-AI button, not the other way round.

I love threads about Mozilla. New CEO says he's not going to remove adblockers, people suspect him for planning to remove adblockers. Mozilla says they'll add a killswitch for all AI features (so that the tiny but vocal anti-AI minority will be happy), and people blame them for not having it as an enable-switch. Whatever they do, they simply cannot win. I'm personally starting to suspect the main issue with Mozilla i…

When you have a position in the project called "CEO" and that person has the ability to hand down edicts of what he or she sees the project as being, that's when you get into trouble, especially in free software. We've seen this way of developing software co-opted by major companies who have turned otherwise good projects - Chromium and AOSP immediately come to mind - into vendor lock-in and spyware by some suit who has been told he needs to create value.

The thing they can do to win is to start acting like they maintain a free/libre open-source software project. It should be completely fine for Mozilla to make a grand total of $0.00 off of Firefox.

Think of Linux (specifically the kernel) or Python. Sure there's a person whose opinion holds more weight than everyone else's (at least for the kernel), but they typically focus on delivering general guidance to a group of people who are free to create features on their own and present those to leadership. If it's quality and fits what the general purpose of the project is, it gets merged into the trunk, and released with everything else.

That needs to be how Mozilla handles Firefox at this point. If some working group of contributors wants to start an implementation of GenAI in Firefox, let them do so and let the community hash it out. If the community doesn't feel the need to create it, well, then Firefox won't have it... and that's fine.

So many of these free software projects try to do too much and change what the core output of the project is in the process, and they lose sight of what the project is.

Re: Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features

#119

Post by ekr____ »

catapart wrote: post #91
fsflover wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not a gray area, and "opt-in" isn't something to be weasled-worded around How about "Translate" button?

What about it? If it's output is generated by the manipulation of tensors and weights, it doesn't belong in my browser. It's not there to because I need to browse, it's there because I want to read content that is not in a language that the content provider has supported for me. I could feed those network responses right into a separate, non-browser app and have it translate stuff for me, if I wanted. Why should I be…

> Why should I be required to download and ignore your translation feature, when I could just as easily not have it included in the first place?

This seems like special pleading. The browser (and any software package) is full of features that some people use and others don't. Just off the top of my head, these include: the password manager, PDF viewer, dev tools, and the extensions store. Each new SKU that the vendor has to provide is additional effort to build and test, and the result is that it's more expensive to produce the product. Moreover, it makes it harder for users to discover new features what they might want (oh, you wanted view source, you needed Firefox developer edition).

On the specific case of translation, I don't really see much of a distinction between "I need to browse" and "I want to read content that is not in a language that the content provider has supported for me". In both cases, I want to get the content on the site and I'd like the browser to help me do it.

> I don't mind being the minority, I just don't think it's inappropriate to ask for only what I need instead of "all the bullshit you want to force me to have".

And you can have that by building it yourself. It's open source software. What you're really asking for is for Mozilla to build a version of the software that has only the features you personally want.

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