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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

#201

Post by wkat4242 »

MisterTea wrote: post #149
samschooler wrote: post #23

I'm going to chime in here, I think 1. This is great and Mozilla is listening to it's core fans and 2. I want Firefox to be a competitive browser. Without AI enabled features + agent mode being first class citizens, this will be a non-starter in 2 years. I want my non-tech family members/friends to install Firefox not because I come over at Christmas, but because they want to. Because it's a browser that "just works.…

> this will be a non-starter in 2 years. Why though? Seriously.

Yeah, most of the browsers "with AI" are not existing because they're so incredibly useful. They're there because it's a hype, because their parent companies have invested billions and they need to show their shareholders it's actually being used by people. So they ram it in our faces, left right and center. They're not doing this to help us, they're helping themselves.

Mozilla doesn't need to play that game because they're not selling any AI.

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

#202

Post by brokencode »

bayindirh wrote: post #185
brokencode wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree. It’s just going to become an expectation that AI is in the browser. It’s so nice just to be able to ask the browser to summarize the page, or ask questions about a long article. I know a lot of people on Hacker News are hostile to AI and like to imagine everybody hates it, but I personally find it very helpful.

Considering pirating the whole internet and boiling the planet is required to summarize a single page in a mediocre manner, it’s understandable that people who knows how the sausages are made are against it.

We need some regulation on them for sure. They should be paying for the content they train on and use in their search results.

They’re still very compelling as a user.

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

#203

Post by wkat4242 »

e2le wrote: post #9

Of all the AI features added recently, local translations is one that I would be OK with being enabled by default. It's useful, and its value proposition is much less dubious.

Yes but local translation already is in Firefox and it's already made with some kind of AI model. Nobody complained about that.

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

#204

Post by CamperBob2 »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #197
skydhash wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what you would want to summarize a page. If I'm reading a blog, that means that I want to read it, not just a condensed version that might miss the exact information I need for an insight or create something that was never there.

You can also just skim it. It feels like LLM summarization boils down to an argument to substitute technology for media literacy. Plus, the latency on current APIs is often on the order of seconds, on top of whatever the page load time is. We know from decades [0] of research that users don't wait seconds. [0] https://research.google/blog/speed-matters/

It makes a big difference when the query runs in a sidebar without closing the tab, opening a new one, or otherwise distracting your attention.

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

#205

Post by johnnyanmac »

sigmar wrote: post #178
MisterTea wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you ever need a website you're visiting translated? Yes. Firefox and Chrome already offer this. > Have you ever not understood a term or phrase on a website and had to go to wikipedia/urbandictionary/google to explain it? Yeah. And? > Have you ever wanted to do a 'fuzzy search' of a 300 page document (where you don't know the exact string of text to ctrl-f, but want to see where they talk about a particular topi…

>Yes. Firefox and Chrome already offer this. yes, both use machine learning methods to translate pages. You're already using AI and don't realize it.

Okay, what's the problem? The UX of Google Translate is fine

- it will pop up when it senses a webpage in a language you don't speak.

- it will ask if you want to translate it. You have options to always translate this language or to never do it.

- it will respect your choice and no pop up every-time insisting "no please try it this time". Or worse, decide by default to translate anywyay behind my back.

- There are settings to also enable/disable this that will not arbitrarily reset whenever the app updates.

There are certainly environmental issues to address, but I've accepted that this US administration is not going to address this in any meaningful way. Attacking individuals will not solve this issue so I'm not doing this. So for now, my main mantra is "don't bother me". the UX of much AI can't even clear that.

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

#206

Post by homebrewer »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #196
skydhash wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what you would want to summarize a page. If I'm reading a blog, that means that I want to read it, not just a condensed version that might miss the exact information I need for an insight or create something that was never there.

You don't use it to summarize pages (or at least I don't), but to help understand content within a page while minimizing distractions. For example: I was browsing a Reddit thread a few hours ago and came upon a comment to the effect of "Bertrand Russell argued for a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviets at the end of WWII." That seemed to conflict with my prior understanding of Bertrand Russell, to say the least.…

And this explanation is very likely to be entirely hallucinated, or worse, subtly wrong in ways that's not obvious if you're not already well versed in the subject. So if you care about the truth even a little bit, you then have to go and recheck everything it has "said".

Why waste time and energy on the lying machine in the first place? Just yesterday I asked "PhD-level intelligence" for a well known quote from a famous person because I wasn't able to find it quickly in wikiquotes.

It fabricated three different quotes in a row, none of them right. One of them was supposedly from a book that doesn't really exist.

So I resorted to a google search and found what I needed in less time it took to fight that thing.

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

#207

Post by wkat4242 »

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…

> New CEO says he's not going to remove adblockers, people suspect him for planning to remove adblockers

It's because he has obviously been thinking about it. That $150M number didn't just come out of nowhere. Someone at Mozilla modelled this. The resulting analysis made it into the CEO's mind so far he even mentioned it without being asked.

This is something that's unthinkable to most of the Mozilla users. That's why it's so shocking.

It's like your son making dinner conversation like "hey I was thinking, if I would sell drugs at school I'd make at least 500$ a week! But don't worry I'm not going to do that!".

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

#208

Post by CamperBob2 »

homebrewer wrote: post #206
CamperBob2 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't use it to summarize pages (or at least I don't), but to help understand content within a page while minimizing distractions. For example: I was browsing a Reddit thread a few hours ago and came upon a comment to the effect of "Bertrand Russell argued for a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviets at the end of WWII." That seemed to conflict with my prior understanding of Bertrand Russell, to say the least.…

And this explanation is very likely to be entirely hallucinated, or worse, subtly wrong in ways that's not obvious if you're not already well versed in the subject. So if you care about the truth even a little bit, you then have to go and recheck everything it has "said". Why waste time and energy on the lying machine in the first place? Just yesterday I asked "PhD-level intelligence" for a well known quote from a fa…

And this explanation is very likely to be entirely hallucinated, or worse, subtly wrong in ways that's not obvious if you're not already well versed in the subject. So if you care about the truth even a little bit, you then have to go and recheck everything it has "said".

It cited its sources, which is certainly more than you've done.

Just yesterday I asked "PhD-level intelligence" for a well known quote from a famous person because I wasn't able to find it quickly in wikiquotes.

In my experience this means that you typed a poorly-formed question into the free instant version of ChatGPT, got an answer worthy of the effort you put into it, and drew a sweeping conclusion that you will now stand by for the next 2-3 years until cognitive dissonance finally catches up with you. But now I'm the one who's making stuff up, I guess.

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

#210

Post by johnnyanmac »

AuthAuth wrote: post #145
andrepd wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Without AI enabled features + agent mode being first class citizens, this will be a non-starter in 2 years. The confidence with which people say these things... s/AI/NFT and I've heard this exact sentence many times before.

NFT was always a meme and crypto has proven its staying power.

Gambling has also proven its staying power. A low trust society and some early coin explosions will do that. I don't think its staying power is here in a healthy way, personally.
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