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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

#211

Post by mort96 »

jeppester wrote: post #175
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?

> 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? If it wasn't because I find myself using the AI-sidebar all the time I would probably have shared your opinion. I guess it's just quite convenient to have it separated from the "regular" tabs and their history.

Then you can install an AI extension.

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

#212

Post by jamespo »

altairprime wrote: post #34

Ironically, I bet that a significant majority of the users that turn on the AI kill switch — which must have some kind of phone-home telematics attached — will also be users who have disabled Firefox metrics collection and so will not have their opinion counted. So, the most effective path here for y’all to be heard is not flipping the switch off yourself (do so anyways!) — anyone who cares at this stage has probably…

For anyone motivated to do this the number of installs will be vanishingly small.

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

#213

Post by andy12_ »

krige wrote: post #169
TeMPOraL wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Context dependant phrases, from simple pronouns to whole domain specific terms, are still randomly wrong, sometimes appallingly so. Hallucinations still happen. Auto-AI translation youtube uses is, bluntly, horrid. Any jokes, even obvious ones, are still fumbled frequently. LLM based translation looks more convincing but requires the same level of scrutiny that previous tools did. From a workflow POV they only added…

> Auto-AI translation youtube uses is, bluntly, horrid. Any jokes, even obvious ones, are still fumbled frequently.

Youtube auto-translations are horrible indeed, and I say that as someone that has to live with the fact that Youtube decides to badly translate titles from a language I understad to Spanish because bilingual people don't exist I suppose. But that is because they use some dumb cheap model to make the translations; probably not even a Gemini-based model.

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

#214

Post by mort96 »

godelski wrote: post #190
mort96 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But that's not what happened. That's not the context of the thread. The battle was won. So celebrate. The war may not be over but it's not like we lost. > someone more serious picks up the mantle. Let's cross that bridge when/ IF we get there. But until then, maybe don't set the stage for them to take up that mantle. If all we do is complain then obviously they'll just learn to ignore us. So don't sour the victory, i…

No battle has been won. Firefox's market share is dwindling, and they're going full steam ahead with turning Firefox into an "AI browser". Yes, they are adding an option to turn off AI features, but I don't want to use an "AI browser with AI features disabled", I want to use a normal web browser. Mozilla is not delivering that.

Note that just not bogging down Firefox with AI features is not enough here. Firefox market share has been going downhill for most of my life, long before they appointed this new AI-crazed CEO. I don't know what the solution is, but it's clear that it's not Mozilla.

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

#219

Post by aembleton »

ItsBob wrote: post #180

Maybe it's just me but why is it on by default? Why is this shit not off in the first place? Why can't Firefox just be a browser with great html, css, js rendering and then have a bunch of toggles for extra crap that people want? Do they actually have metrics that show "When we enable this crap by default we make an extra $X Million per year"? I'd put money on that being untrue. I bet it's like the data-driven ad spe…

Sounds like LibreWolf would suit you better: https://librewolf.net/

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

#220

Post by sunaookami »

mort96 wrote: post #170
gkbrk wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Should Firefox build in a separate side bar for every popular website? Would you want a Facebook side bar and Facebook account integration? I wouldn't.

Funfact: Firefox already had a Facebook sidebar and integration back in 2012! https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/firefox-introduces-new-s... The Social API was later removed though because it was wildly unpopular (unrelated but man look at the good macOS and Firefox design in the screenshot...)
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