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Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

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Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#431

Post by cowboylowrez »

salviati wrote: post #54
TheServitor wrote: post #23

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.

Your word might be of petabytes of traffic. Some people have slow lines. Some people have metered Internet subscriptions. Not everyone has access to the same infrastructure you have.

yeah 3 bucks a gig here for quite a while, finally got a kinda sorta unlimited connection recently. I scripted up a meter of sorts to watch my traffic and its amazing how much is just trash. video advertising of any sort is awful. there were many sites that if I just forgot about them in the browser window they would happily reload periodically and trash my days budget lol, then using "links" for just reading really shows off how many websites just reject you for not having javascript.

now I'm working on upgrading my computer lol

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#432

Post by bityard »

doginasuit wrote: post #278

"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.

Are you okay with a 1 GB chrome install suddenly becoming a 5 GB chrome install on all your machines, without your permission or knowledge, for functionality you may or may not want?

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#433

Post by [deleted] »

jasonlotito wrote: post #383
vanderZwan wrote: post #314

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.

[deleted]

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#435

Post by bityard »

maxloh wrote: post #423
scriptsmith wrote: post #31

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…

The more severe problem is that Google installs model weight files on a per-user basis, meaning Chrome occupies 4 more GB of space for every OS user on your device.

The company I work at has several environments and hundreds of VDI users in each environment. Chrome is the default browser in all of them. By my rough napkin math, this one small change by Google will eat up at least 15 terabytes of new disk space in total. (I sure hope we are using deduplication at the physical storage layer...)

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#437

Post by gmaszz »

chrome://on-device-internals/

..will tell you everything you need to know - including model state, file path, device capabilities, etc.

And there's a single button to uninstall the model.

There is also the ability to load a model from a central location, as suggested by another commenter here, although I haven't tested it yet.

The official chrome.dev Prompt API Playground linked in the thread doesn't work.

Chatgpt made a me tiny chrome extension to test the prompt and summariser api's when they announced last year - my laptop wasn't capable the time but these newer models are obviously smaller and more efficient, so it has sprung into life.

Full prompt and code is on pastebin `7Ja3ATHZ` if anyone wants to test quickly. It summarises the current page and brainstorms app ideas based on the summary.

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#438

Post by kingstnap »

ben_w wrote: post #332

> Energy intensity of network data transfer: 0.06 kWh per GB, the mid-band of Pärssinen et al. (2018) "Environmental impact assessment of online advertising", Science of The Total Environment [14]. The paper reports a 0.04-0.10 kWh/GB range depending on the share of fixed-line vs mobile transfer and inclusion of end-user device energy. 0.06 is a defensible mid-point. 2018? An estimate from 8 years ago is going to be…

0.04 to 0.1 kWh/GB is insane even for 2018 lol.

I have gigabit internet (125 MB/s). This would imply when I'm downloading something I'm using 18 to 45 kW of electricity. Completely bonkers.

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#439

Post by Parae »

MaKey wrote: post #114
tomtomtom777 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain what the "No Gender" extension is about and why it is a must?

It removes gender speech ( Leser*innen becomes Leser ), which can be awkward and hurt the reading flow.

Doesn't really seem like a MUST then...

Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent

#440

Post by ChoGGi »

baq wrote: post #434

I don't get the outrage. AAA games routinely take 100-200 GBs. I certainly prefer local inference to feeding google my private data over the network (assuming they actually don't do that anyway...)

I download a game with intent, and they're stored on a larger drive than where my programs/user data is installed.
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