These people owe me a RAM upgrade. This is out of control.
Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
501–510 of 1001 posts
Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#502Framing 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.
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Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#503Framing 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.
It is sad that this terrible comment inspired so many responses. It is 4GB of traffic for one person, and I am not aware of any single person who is moving petabytes of traffic.
Comparing a single person to the entire world to make the inconvenience to or violation of a single person seem small is deliberately and thoughtfully deceptive.
Why not 4TB in traffic and storage for chrome, then? In a world of petabytes of traffic, it's a feather. What's wrong with jailing somebody wrongly for 20 years in a world where millions are jailed, many wrongly, often for lifetimes? What's a lost finger on the job when there's a genocide going on?
Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#504Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a small model, so what utility can I / Google expect from it? What is the on-board model used for?
It's not a very good small model to be honest. That said, you might be surprised to learn that some of the models from 3b-9b could probably replace 80% of the things nonvibe coders use chatgpt for. Its a good idea to run small models locally if your computer can host them for privacy and cash saving reasons. But how can you trust Google to autoinstall one on your machine in 2026? I just couldn't do it.
> That said, you might be surprised to learn that some of the models from 3b-9b could probably replace 80% of the things nonvibe coders use chatgpt for.
Really? I'm a total amateur when it comes to doing anything with local models but I tried a few in this range using ollama at this point, and they didn't seem to know much about anything, and I couldn't figure out how to get them to search the web or run other tools, so that was where the experiment ended.
A small local model that can use bash would be a bit of a game-changer for me.
Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#505Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a small model, so what utility can I / Google expect from it? What is the on-board model used for?
this is considered a large model. i think you might be surprised how many "small" models chrome has already pulled down on your disk. but to answer your question: one of the services that uses a small model: PermissionsAIv4 """ Use the Permission Predictions Service and the AIv4 model to surface permission notification requests using a quieter UI when the likelihood of the user granting the permission is predicted to…
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Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#506On one level, I can't figure out how bent out of shape to get over this (but read on). Software I use downloads updates all the time, adds new features all the time, and I mostly don't ask for any of it. So if you see this as just a new feature that provides some on-device AI, it's a bit, so what? A new feature? The last GT7 or Flight Sim patch was bigger than this, what's the big deal, etc. However, that's not reall…
Weird, I access PayPal through FF all the time. It's probably one of those weird geographical differences or something. One thing I did see is that at least one site (AliExpress) doesn't initiate the redirect after the payment, but still accepted the payment.
I have the PayPal on Firefox problem. Once I see it, I just give up and use a credit card instead.
Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#507There's simply no reason to be using Google Chrome in 2026. Purge it from your computer and install a less user hostile browser. Google Chrome just exists to make Google money at your expense, to sell your data and deplete your battery.
What do you suggest as alternatives? Currently I'm using firefox which seems ok but I know they are propped up by google somewhat
Brave
Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#508[flagged]
Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#509Why they insert their "DNA" without my consent?
Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#510Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
4GB, $0.10 (whatever the HD price) that is the equivalent of a High School level intelligent brain that can perform many cognitive tasks (and in the future even PhD level intelligence) for free? Oh, the horror!!! Wait, let me pay my HVAC guy $500 he deserved because he came all the way from his home to replace a fuse
Here is your google brain on your device, whether you want it or not.