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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

#221

Post by johnnyanmac »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #204
AlotOfReading wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> without closing the tab, opening a new one, or otherwise distracting your attention.

well, 2/3 is admirable in this day and age.

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

#222

Post by johnnyanmac »

Dwedit wrote: post #155
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.

I don't like how translation is only unavailable when the browser "thinks" the whole site is in a particular language. What if there's a single sentence that's not? Or if it guesses the site's language incorrectly? No translation for you. We need more control over the feature. Even just the ability to select text, right click, and have a "Translation" menu would be huge. Looks like there is such a feature, but it doe…

before Firefox put it in the browser, the kinda finicky extension (which I still have installed) does in fact have this feature. highlight a work and you can translate specific passages.

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

#223

Post by ares623 »

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…

Lots of imagining here.

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

#224

Post by brokencode »

kgwxd wrote: post #211
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.

then you can install an extension.

I’m fine with an extension personally. And I don’t use Firefox to begin with, so I don’t particularly care what they do.

I just think the average browser user in 5-10 years will expect the AI features. And plenty of others won’t want to use those features, and that’s fine.

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

#225

Post by sfRattan »

RunSet wrote: post #144
999900000999 wrote: post #114

Have it as a stand alone plugin. I should have to manually install this AI stuff.

Language models are not like the Classic Theme, which can be relegated to an extension (now defunct). Language models are like Hello, Pocket, and Sync. Core browser features one and all that must silently run by default unless explicitly disabled.

Sync is the only feature you listed which is arguably a core feature, in that it makes sense to build into the browser to be able to sync as much of the browser's settings and data as possible for the user. Everything else --- Hello, Pocket, and LLMs --- can and should sink or swim as extensions which the user must seek out and install if they provide sufficient value.

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

#226

Post by phyzome »

BeetleB wrote: post #134
ksherlock wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't use firefox so I can't confirm, but one issue might be 15+ (?!) different config settings needed to disable AI and it still won't go away. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46095873

That's a UX issue, but I keep hearing complaints about privacy.

Anything that makes it easy to accidentally send local data elsewhere is a privacy issue.

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

#227

Post by araes »

azemetre wrote: post #135
worldsavior wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not a normal user of Firefox then.

Firefox has <5% of browser share, no one is a normal user of firefox.

Was actually looking for somebody mentioning this bit. Admittedly, one of the few regular Firefox users. Yet, as a regular Firefox user, this much ranting about something that can be turned off with a click, is kind of annoying. The stuff that's been added so far ("Allow AI to read the beginning of the page and generate key points", "Solo AI Website Creator", "Sidebar AI chatbot") is incredibly easy to disable. Been in advanced, beta, dev releases for a while.

Edge has a larger market share (4%-7% depending on who you ask)

Firefox has (2%-6%, similar issue). Firefox mostly scores well among Wikimedia users and tracking. (High as 15% recently) Firefox barely even registers with Mobile users (0.5%-1.5%).

And. They both pale in comparison to Chrome (56%-69%) and Safari (14%-24%) in terms of user base / market share. People can argue and rant about Firefox doing something, yet they're arguing about 2%-6% of the WWW users currently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

https://radar.cloudflare.com/reports/browser-market-share-20...

https://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php

https://kinsta.com/browser-market-share/

https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

https://www.statista.com/statistics/545520/market-share-of-i...

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

#228

Post by BeetleB »

phyzome wrote: post #226
BeetleB wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a UX issue, but I keep hearing complaints about privacy.

Anything that makes it easy to accidentally send local data elsewhere is a privacy issue.

> Anything that makes it easy to accidentally send local data elsewhere is a privacy issue.

How is it "easy" if nothing is sent unless you configure the AI?

What I'm asking is: If I do a brand new profile, default configuration, how can any AI related feature send anything that is of privacy concern? If you don't set up an LLM provider, it has nowhere to send to.

I may be wrong, which is why I'm asking in the thread. So far, no one has shown what the problem is.

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

#229

Post by CamperBob2 »

homebrewer wrote: post #215
CamperBob2 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 famou…

Unless you've then read through those sources — and not asked the machine to summarize them again — I don't see how that changes anything. Judging by your tone and several assumptions based on nothing I see that you're fully converted. No reason to keep talking past each other.

No, I'm not "fully converted." I reject the notion that you have to join one cult or the other when it comes to this stuff.

I think we've all seen plenty of hallucinated sources, no argument there. Source hallucination wasn't a problem 2-3 years ago simply because LLMs couldn't cite their sources at all. It was a massive problem 1-2 years ago because it happened all the freaking time. It is a much smaller problem today. It still happens too often, especially with the weaker models.

I'm personally pretty annoyed that no local model (at least that I can run on my own hardware) is anywhere near as hallucination-resistant as the major non-free, non-local frontier models.

In my example, no, I didn't bother confirming the Russell sources in detail, other than to check that they (a) existed and (b) weren't completely irrelevant. I had other stuff to do and don't actually care that much. The comment just struck me as weird, and now I'm better informed thanks to Firefox's AI feature. My takeaway wasn't "Russell wanted to nuke the Russians," but rather "Russell's positions on pacifism and aggression were more nuanced than I thought. Remember to look into this further when/if it comes up again." Where's the harm in that?

Can you share what you asked, and what model you were using? I like to collect benchmark questions that show where progress is and is not happening. If your question actually elicited such a crappy response from a leading-edge reasoning model, it sounds like a good one. But if you really did just issue a throwaway prompt to a free/instant model, then trust me, you got a very wrong impression of where the state of the art really is. The free ChatGPT is inexcusably bad. It was still miscounting the r's in "Strawberry" as late as 5.1.

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

#230

Post by nateb2022 »

BloondAndDoom wrote: post #177
alexgotoi wrote: post #131

This is exactly the kind of boring, unsexy feature that actually builds trust. It’s the opposite of the usual “surprise, here’s an AI sidebar you didn’t ask for and can’t fully disable” pattern. If they want people to try this stuff, the path is pretty simple: ship a browser that treats AI like any other power feature. Off by default, clearly explained, reversible, and preferably shippable as an extension. You can al…

My problem here is this; products are designed with a vision. If you are designing with 2-3 visions it won’t be that good, if you design with one vision (AI) then non-AI version of the product will be an after thought. This tells me non-AI version of it will suffer (IMHO)

> if you design with one vision (AI) then non-AI version of the product will be an after thought

That’s like saying if a car manufacturer adds a "Sport Mode", the steering wheel and brakes suddenly become an afterthought.

Being AI-available means we'll welcome more Firefox users who would otherwise choose a different browser. Being AI-optional means we won't alienate the anti-AI crowd. Why not embrace both?

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