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Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

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Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#151

Post by TeMPOraL »

krige wrote: post #116
TeMPOraL wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When would've thought that to solve natural language translation, one would first need to solve... natural language. All those arguments about agents and hallucinations kind of distracted people from noticing we've accodentally built a universal translator .

As someone both exposed to this new wave of LLM style translation in various media, and someone who has background in translation, no we didn't .

Could you please explain briefly then why my statement is wrong? What are the fundamental challenges not addressed by LLMs today? Do you think the whole approach has insurmountable roadblocks ahead, or is it more of a matter of refinement?

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#152

Post by mrweasel »

Spixel_ wrote: post #137
mrklol wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox mentions the following ones: "- Translations, which help you browse the web in your preferred language. - Alt text in PDFs, which add accessibility descriptions to images in PDF pages. - AI-enhanced tab grouping, which suggests related tabs and group names. - Link previews, which show key points before you open a link. - AI chatbot in the sidebar, which lets you use your chosen chatbot as you browse, includin…

They all seem like great features.

On paper yes. The problem is that they clutter the UI, they trigger at weird times and they turn out to be less useful that they may appear.

Then there's also people, like me, who just want the browser to browse the web. I don't want link preview (annoying feature), Firefox isn't my PDF viewer, I don't have that many tabs that I need to group them and I don't use AI chatbots.

So having a single button to disable all of these features is pretty great. I still want a Firefox Lite, that just does browsing and allows me to add the few extension I want to whatever feature I believe is missing.

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#154

Post by vient »

godelski wrote: post #132
whizzter wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should get the best metrics out of update server communications anyhow, 30% or more users getting update downloads than having AI enabled should be obvious.

I've read this three times now and still don't understand you. Do you think people don't update their software? Are you just counting every update as people happy about the kill switch? There'll be so much noise in that signal it'll be almost useless. You can't differentiate it from anything else. For all anyone knows it happened because the word Firefox was in the top story on hacker news

Approximately all people update Firefox so you don't need telemetry to count "AI disabled" installations, instead you can derive it as "updates requested" minus "AI enabled".

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#155

Post by gkbrk »

mort96 wrote: post #139
godelski wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the bad kind that Firefox is shoving in? Do they have any good kind? What's the ratio?

Why is there a chat bot sidebar??? And even if there aren't that many bad AI features now, they've signalled their intent for Firefox to become an "AI browser". I don't know what they mean by that, but I know I don't want it. The chat bot sidebar is surely just the beginning. It's primarily in response to the backlash from people who don't want an "AI browser" that they're promising a kill switch. But I don't want to…

Because people like chat bot sidebars.

My code editor has a built-in chat bot sidebar that I use every day. It's not a huge stretch that people who use chatbot sidebars in other applications would also want one in their browser.

ChatGPT is the #6 most popular website in the world, why wouldn't a browser want tighter integration with such a popular kind of service?

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#156

Post by mort96 »

input_sh wrote: post #149
mort96 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what sort of user testing made them decide that what Firefox users really need is a chat bot in the site bar. Isn't a chat bot in a tab good enough? And calling translation "AI" seems like deceitful retroactive rebranding. Why is machine translation suddenly "AI" now ? It was never branded as such before. Is "AI" here just used to mean machine learning?

IMHO no. Every chatbot has so much wasted space, it really doesn't need to be full-width. Also, what's easier? Option 1: Being on a tab, copying the URL of the tab, switching to the chatbot tab, pasting the URL and writing some instructions about what to do with that tab. Option 2: Clicking on the "summarise page" button (whether from the sidebar or from right-click context menu), and having the browser pre-fill the…

Option 3: don't

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#157

Post by on_the_train »

ddxv wrote: post #102

Where are the AI features in Firefox? Looking around right now the only one I see is right click tab -> Summarize page (NEW). I googled a bit and see they have some grouping of tabs feature I've never used/seen (or want). The only other maybe AI feature I remember seeing is the odd left hand bar that is there on fresh installs and I usually remove to declutter. Are those the features this kill switch removes or was t…

YouTube is completely broken with this shitty spark thing. Also yesterday I was greeted with an entire new sidebar. It's comical

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#159

Post by mort96 »

godelski wrote: post #146
mort96 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who has expressed a desire for Firefox to become "an AI browser"? Because that's the source of the complaints. I don't want to use an "AI browser", kill switch or not. If this "AI browser" dies because of their mission to destroy community goodwill, good. I'm sick of giving the benefit of the doubt every time they royally fuck up. This situation where they're the steward of the only non-Google browser is not tenable,…

> This situation where they're the steward of the only non-Google browser is not tenable, something needs to change. So what, you're going to help Google shove the knife in deeper? Idk man, seems like a bad way to fight Google. But honestly it just feels like you didn't even read my comment. I'm sorry that it's a lot, but I'm petty sure people can handle 10-30 seconds of reading. I even said it doesn't matter if Mozi…

Letting Mozilla torpedo the only non-Google browser is also a bad way to fight Google. It's looking bleak. The only hope is that Mozilla dies and someone more serious picks up the mantle. Not sure who that would be though.

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#160

Post by TeMPOraL »

mort96 wrote: post #139
godelski wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the bad kind that Firefox is shoving in? Do they have any good kind? What's the ratio?

Why is there a chat bot sidebar??? And even if there aren't that many bad AI features now, they've signalled their intent for Firefox to become an "AI browser". I don't know what they mean by that, but I know I don't want it. The chat bot sidebar is surely just the beginning. It's primarily in response to the backlash from people who don't want an "AI browser" that they're promising a kill switch. But I don't want to…

> Why is there a chat bot sidebar???

To save users from copy-pasting to a separate chatbot instance, or installing sketchy extensions? It's clunky, but it's helpful and exposes users to more alternatives. AFAIK it can be made to connect to local models now, too.

LLM side tab is a powerful mode of AI use that most people haven't experienced yet; for some reason this space seems underdeveloped publicly relative to some proprietary/internal solutions at some companies that I have knowledge of.

> I don't want to use an "AI browser with AI features disabled", I just wanna use a regular web browser...

Is there a difference beyond branding? FWIW, branding does matter and I hope Firefox remains a "browser with (optional) AI" and not "AI browser".

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