401–410 of 1001 posts
"Silently installs" is misleading. They are including a file in the package which is presumably related to the functionality of the software. I don't use chrome for a long list of reasons but it is not standard or expected to get consent for that.
Look at how many headlines indicated that something is silently happening. It's a weird trend at the moment.
I wanted a browser, not an LLM.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then what is your definition of "installing" exactly? Are you going to split hairs about it not being a separate program being installed and running in the background, but weights being used by code that is run inside the browser? Because honestly, I don't think there's any significant difference from the user's perspective here. Other than the fact that doing the latter bypasses the need to get permission to install…
> A 4 GiB model has nothing to do with the functionality of a web browser. It is something forced on users without their consent. This does not happen. The model is not downloaded unless the user intentionally uses the feature that requires it. Then it's downloaded at that point.
That that feature (a) requires a local LLM, (b) will install a multi-GB download without telling the user, all happen without any explicit user consent.
This is a bit disingenuous. If you install Chrome, you install Chrome and all it's parts. They don't ask your consent for individual parts because that would be absurd. If you don't want Chrome and all its parts, don't use it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Auto update is basically a root backdoor, it's especially troublesome when you are not the customer, you are the product!
Yes, which is why I use paid-for OSes and browsers, instead of free ones like Linux or Firefox. I don't want to be the product.
"Silently installs" is misleading. They are including a file in the package which is presumably related to the functionality of the software. I don't use chrome for a long list of reasons but it is not standard or expected to get consent for that.
There is, however, precedent for software alerting/asking the user to install “extras” or utility packs and showing the disk size that content will take up and even allowing the user to choose a location to store such things. Creative software does this all the time. There’s nothing stopping Google Chrome from doing something similar except, I suspect, Google knows or feels it will result in many fewer installs of it…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is, however, precedent for software alerting/asking the user to install “extras” or utility packs and showing the disk size that content will take up and even allowing the user to choose a location to store such things. Creative software does this all the time. There’s nothing stopping Google Chrome from doing something similar except, I suspect, Google knows or feels it will result in many fewer installs of it…
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If Chrome has the #optimization-guide-on-device-model and #prompt-api-for-gemini-nano flags enabled, either because it's part of some Origin Trial / Early Stable Release or something, then web pages will have access to the new Prompt API which allows any webpage to initiate the (one-time) download of the ~2.7 GiB CPU or ~4.0 GiB GPU model using LanguageModel.create() https://developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/prompt-api Wh…
Those two (and more) exist in chrome://flags in Chrome 147. I'm disabling them now, with the expectation that will prevent the new default. One option I'm leaving as default is "Use LiteRT-LM runtime for on-device model service inference." Any comment on that?
If Chrome has the #optimization-guide-on-device-model and #prompt-api-for-gemini-nano flags enabled, either because it's part of some Origin Trial / Early Stable Release or something, then web pages will have access to the new Prompt API which allows any webpage to initiate the (one-time) download of the ~2.7 GiB CPU or ~4.0 GiB GPU model using LanguageModel.create() https://developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/prompt-api Wh…
It is a small model, so what utility can I / Google expect from it? What is the on-board model used for?
Precedence for shipping models alongside consumer software.
Potentially without consent if it truly is a silent install.
Framing 4GB of data moving in a world of petabytes of traffic as a specific environmental disaster is kind of a stretch, regardless of whether we want the model.
Chrome is used by about 3.8 billion people [1]. So, if this is rolled out to every chrome user over the next year or two, this would generate about 15 Exabytes of traffic. It's difficult to find accurate, useful numbers on this, but lets assume 29 grams of CO2e per GB, this would be about 450k tons of CO2e. This in turn, equates to average household CO2 expenditure of almost 300k households. So make your own judgemen…
About equal to a major iOS update at 8 GB x 1.5B.
Netflix and YouTube together are perhaps around 200EB/month.
https://chromeenterprise.google/policies/#GenAILocalFoundati...
The prompt API can be tested here: https://chrome.dev/web-ai-demos/prompt-api-playground/
It would be really helpful if there was a way to download the model to a central location, so multiple users on a single system could easily share it.