then dont use google chrome..i'm fine with it
Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
921–930 of 1001 posts
Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#922Earlier 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 bundle…
You just described 95% of the parts of all software, especially in this era. Yes, that's the problem
I had a client complain that some software we recommended installed a database. How fucking dare we install this giant blob of software without his consent! It was MySQL, and integral to the application.
So what's your solution? A click-through acceptance of every single library, component, dependency, etc. every app uses?
P.S. - out here in the real world of the people who just use software, they don't want this. Which is its own problem, because they should care more than they do, but we play the hand we're delt.
Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#923Earlier quoted context omitted.
I, personally, have found the adtech bloat (for both disk space and processor usage) to be a huge issue for quite some time. If this is the hill where the public decides to take a stand I'll happily stand beside them to try and reverse this gradual enshittification. I think several other hills were more worthy to defend but nobody noticed those ones so apparently this is the place to fight that fight. I doubt anyone…
Modern games include assets with very large file sizes that operating systems do not.
Yeah, I was surprised to learn that Ticket to Ride (downloaded on Steam) uses like a half gigabyte, but the most data-intense thing it does is a few musical tracks and 2D images with scaling. They fit Final Fantasy 3 (SNES) with 3 CDs of music (albeit low quality) and Mode 7 graphics for the airship onto like 3 MB.
Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#924The 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 O…
Might be a good addition for https://superuser.com/questions/1937372/
Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#925Framing 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…
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Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#926Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bad analogy. "Some users disable it" is very different from "it was introduced without any notification or information about what it does and the vast majority of laypeople have negative sentiment toward it".
> vast majority of laypeople have negative sentiment toward it Citation very much needed. Technologists are not laypeople, and are almost certainly a vocal minority .
I'm surprised by this request. People detest AI.
Local subreddits are filled with posts "calling out" usage of AI by local businesses or governments. Consensus is that persons who are found out to be be AI users should be fired or resign, businesses that use it should be boycotted / shamed, etc.
https://www.reddit.com/r/newfoundland/comments/1t3x6q3/aialt...
https://www.reddit.com/r/PEI/comments/1s8rtyn/burger_love_ai...
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Protests around a data center construction project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11Q9ncOdnDg
Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#927This is what I've done after spending some time to look into it, this is for Linux Desktop: Delete Chrome's silent 4 GB AI model file and AI In Chrome, go to: chrome://flags Search for and Disable these: Enables optimization guide on device Prompt API for Gemini Nano AI Mode Open DevTools (F12 or Ctrl+Shift+I). Click the Settings (gear icon). Go to AI Innovations and uncheck Enable AI assistance. For Linux, in a bash…
I just learned from this Reddit post about the On-Device AI setting:
https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/1t536x6/psa_chrome_...
"On-device AI" can be disabled. At least, it is in Chrome on Linux Desktop.
Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#928well, if it's already there and keeps coming back, can I use it?
A local Gemini Nano might be useful!
Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#929This is why I switched to Brave a long time ago. It’s far from perfect, but it would never do anything like that.
Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#930This is nothing, compared to crimes that Windows Update does.