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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

#851

Post by account42 »

crazygringo wrote: post #560

Framing this as needing "consent" is deeply misguided. It's as silly as claiming that Microsoft Word installed an English language spellcheck dictionary without your consent. It's just part of the software. You consented to installing the software and having it autoupdate. That covers it. Now we can argue whether or not it's an appropriate amount of disk space or bandwidth to use, but that's just a reasonable practic…

This kind of unwanted software installed with a product you want used to be clearly considered malware. But these days software companies all think they own your computer and can do whatever they want.

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

#852

Post by russellbeattie »

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.

The climate concern pearl clutching is pure muckraking. The author doesn't care, they're just looking for some sort of controversy. Do they (or the other seemingly horrified commenters) know how much data is transferred during a single evening of watching HD streaming video?

In 2026 4GB of data is not going to have any measurable effect on the climate.

There's a level of hypocrisy involved which is truly absurd. Literally no one reading this is going to curb their data usage. They'll just try to justify their outrage with farcical strawman arguments to be pedantic and then go binge watch some Netflix series without another thought.

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

#853

Post by gamerslexus »

crazygringo wrote: post #560

Framing this as needing "consent" is deeply misguided. It's as silly as claiming that Microsoft Word installed an English language spellcheck dictionary without your consent. It's just part of the software. You consented to installing the software and having it autoupdate. That covers it. Now we can argue whether or not it's an appropriate amount of disk space or bandwidth to use, but that's just a reasonable practic…

Chrome's model is based on copyright infringement and court cases are pending regarding legality. Even if spellcheck dictionary was 4 GB, installing bloated but legal software is different.

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

#854

Post by account42 »

andrewmutz wrote: post #754
Razengan wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's additional software that many users didn't ask for, don't want and will not be aware of > You just described 95% of the parts of all software, especially in this era. And think of the Web - how many gigabytes of terrible adtech and tracking code does the average user download in a month of web browsing without an adblocker? Remember, each one probably packages in a couple hundred NPM dependencies into its bund…

The story is only trending because it’s an AI model and the internet is anti-ai right now. It’s a double standard. It’s like how people are outraged that electricity is being used in data centers to power AI models. When you do the math, the power consumption is far, far less than all the other things you do all day without thinking twice. But again, anti-AI double standard

Oh no, why won't people leave the poor AI companies alone.

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

#855

Post by sgbeal »

The following seems to keep Chrome from re-downloading this beast:

    # From one's $HOME dir:
    rm -fr ./.config/google-chrome/OptGuideOnDeviceModel
    mkdir -p ./.config/google-chrome/OptGuideOnDeviceModel
    touch ./.config/google-chrome/OptGuideOnDeviceModel/weights.bin
    chmod 0400 ./.config/google-chrome/OptGuideOnDeviceModel/weights.bin
    chmod 0500 ./.config/google-chrome/OptGuideOnDeviceModel
Adapt as appropriate for your OS. For "Chrome Unstable" installs, the dir name is google-chrome-unstable.

This has, so far, kept Chrome from (re)installing that file on my system.

Hypothetically the parts involving weights.bin aren't needed so long as the containing directory is not writable.

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

#857

Post by account42 »

k33n wrote: post #764
Razengan wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's additional software that many users didn't ask for, don't want and will not be aware of > You just described 95% of the parts of all software, especially in this era. And think of the Web - how many gigabytes of terrible adtech and tracking code does the average user download in a month of web browsing without an adblocker? Remember, each one probably packages in a couple hundred NPM dependencies into its bund…

> just shut up and sit down and accept it? I mean, that's absolutely your only option other than simply choosing another browser. This will be a non-issue for 99% of Chrome users.

It clearly isn't the only other option - otherwise you wouldn't have people like you and others in this thread being outraged about people taking one of the other options.

That we as a society are beholden to corporations is a myth those corporations want you to believe but its not how things actually work. If we come together to say no then those corporations either comply or will cease to exist.

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

#858

Post by account42 »

xp84 wrote: post #670
ethagnawl wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is a far cry from 4 GiB Equating a 4GB file installed without explicit consent to the installation of a language dictionary is comical. That's like saying an unwanted political mailer left in your mailbox is the equivalent of a pallette of hammers left in your driveway.

It sounds like you have a specific number of GB in mind that an app can take up, below which it's totally their business, and above which they need to plead their case, disclose the purpose, and allow me to choose. What's that number? How did you arrive at it and why? My Chrome binaries are about 700MB on Mac and 500MB on Windows. Is this below or your line, or are they actually in trouble as soon as they're extracte…

So as long as I'm allowed to bump into you I can also smash your face in, right? After all there isn't any clear point where I'm applying too much force.

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

#859

Post by account42 »

laserbeam wrote: post #806
crazygringo wrote: post #560

Framing this as needing "consent" is deeply misguided. It's as silly as claiming that Microsoft Word installed an English language spellcheck dictionary without your consent. It's just part of the software. You consented to installing the software and having it autoupdate. That covers it. Now we can argue whether or not it's an appropriate amount of disk space or bandwidth to use, but that's just a reasonable practic…

That's like saying users have no right to push against certain features. It's like saying Windows Recall was always ok and there was never any reason to demand it not be installed. The only difference is one can choose to use a different browser easier than they can choose a different OS. You're right in the sense that practicality and consent are orthogonal issues. There are probably stronger arguments to complain a…

> The only difference is one can choose to use a different browser easier than they can choose a different OS.

I'm not even sure that is actually true for most people. If you mainly work in the browser, which many do, then you can change the OS under it without impacting the user too much but change the browser and there will need to be much more to adapt/relearn.

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

#860

Post by account42 »

ascorbic wrote: post #839
ZetsuBouKyo wrote: post #837

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree to install it, but I don’t agree to automatic updates. The bigger problem is, I can hardly find where to disable Google’s automatic updates. In the end, I just locked the file permissions to stop that virus-like auto-update program from running.

Auto-updating browsers is one of the best advances in the web dev space in the past decade. I find it hard to believe that anyone who did web development before evergreen browsers became a thing would ever disagree.

Best advances for whom? Lazy web developers?

Considering that most websites are optimized to just barely run on what the developers are targeting, letting them target the "state of the art" instead of what came installed on grandmas machine is been a huge negative for website efficiency and thus average user experience, not to mention global resource waste.

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