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Mistral X Mozilla: Private, Multilingual AI Browsing

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Re: Mistral X Mozilla: Private, Multilingual AI Browsing

#51

Post by walrus01 »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #48
peri-cl wrote: post #5

This is an excellent use case for completely local, small model inference, yet for inexplicable reasons Mozilla wants to normalize uploading your entire private browsing history to a cloud. These (Mistral's and Mozilla's) marketing pages aren't candid enough to clearly explain the difference between local and cloud inference, and that they're asking you to consent to enabling the latter. I'd call that the bare minimu…

> This is an excellent use case for completely local, small model inference Is it really ? LLM take lot of ram and drain battery. People run Firefox on low end computer.

Indeed. Realistically a 'capable' small local LLM, even one that's definitely not as good as externally hosted ones will require a single 16GB GPU and access to basically all of the RAM on the GPU. That's not something people running Firefox on a $500 laptop with 8 or 16GB of total system RAM and a CPU-integrated basic graphics system have to spare.

Re: Mistral X Mozilla: Private, Multilingual AI Browsing

#52

Post by mattstir »

It's interesting to see Firefox attempt to create slightly more privacy-focused cloud inference infra (assuming you can trust that they adhere to their own policies and don't have bugs, and that their partners adhere to their contractual obligations and don't have bugs). Unfortunately that's still a lot of trust that's pretty much impossible for the end-user to verify, but at least it's something? Arguably it's better than the alternative of directly trusting AI companies that have shown absolutely no regard for other laws like copyright, but the marketing of this as ultra-private still leaves a bad taste. I wish this announcement clarified the cloud aspects directly instead of needing to browse through two layers of links to find how it actually works on a privacy notice.

Re: Mistral X Mozilla: Private, Multilingual AI Browsing

#53

Post by Kuinox »

pluc wrote: post #3

What is "AI browsing"?

AI are excellent at ingesting tons of data and getting something relevant from what you asked. I ask it about linux behavior and it will dig through hundreds of patches & mails and will return me informations sourced with links to the patches, mails containing it's affirmations.

Re: Mistral X Mozilla: Private, Multilingual AI Browsing

#54

Post by JeremyNT »

peri-cl wrote: post #5

This is an excellent use case for completely local, small model inference, yet for inexplicable reasons Mozilla wants to normalize uploading your entire private browsing history to a cloud. These (Mistral's and Mozilla's) marketing pages aren't candid enough to clearly explain the difference between local and cloud inference, and that they're asking you to consent to enabling the latter. I'd call that the bare minimu…

> This is an excellent use case for completely local, small model inference, yet for inexplicable reasons Mozilla wants to normalize uploading your entire private browsing history to a cloud.

I certainly agree that this option would be nice to have, but running firefox without an ad blocker on the modern web will ALREADY spin up my fans just rendering all the garbage, and I have a decent laptop.

You can't expect the median Firefox-running device to be able to run a capable enough local model effectively.

Re: Mistral X Mozilla: Private, Multilingual AI Browsing

#55

Post by phrotoma »

JeremyNT wrote: post #54
peri-cl wrote: post #5

This is an excellent use case for completely local, small model inference, yet for inexplicable reasons Mozilla wants to normalize uploading your entire private browsing history to a cloud. These (Mistral's and Mozilla's) marketing pages aren't candid enough to clearly explain the difference between local and cloud inference, and that they're asking you to consent to enabling the latter. I'd call that the bare minimu…

> This is an excellent use case for completely local, small model inference, yet for inexplicable reasons Mozilla wants to normalize uploading your entire private browsing history to a cloud. I certainly agree that this option would be nice to have, but running firefox without an ad blocker on the modern web will ALREADY spin up my fans just rendering all the garbage, and I have a decent laptop. You can't expect the…

Just gonna go ahead and adopt the phrase "spin up my fans" to describe pissing me off.

Re: Mistral X Mozilla: Private, Multilingual AI Browsing

#56

Post by JeremyNT »

fn-mote wrote: post #22
karussell wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is comparable. Nowhere in the news they say it is offline but IMO Gemini Nano is offline (?) I'm not a Google fan but I never understood the outrage as it is a local model ... sure, you have to trust them, but if you use their browser you already do.

> Nowhere in the news they say it is offline Reading HN, I 100% understood “private” to be marketing copy for “local inference”. How else could the information be kept private? I begrudgingly suppose that there is precedent for the usage, like Apple’s Private Relay, but I really don’t think they are comparable.

> Reading HN, I 100% understood “private” to be marketing copy for “local inference”.

Pretty ironic then that here, Mozilla is specifically labeling their "we send it all to the cloud" service as "private."

Re: Mistral X Mozilla: Private, Multilingual AI Browsing

#57

Post by bee_rider »

duskdozer wrote: post #34
_flux wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume Google was just a placeholder for a search engine in the example. And you'll surely need some service to search the web.

I don't know about that. When I hear people reference "Google" it seems to me they do mean Google. Similar with "Claude".

We’ve got the whole post to parse, though.

The idea is obviously applicable to other search engines.

Re: Mistral X Mozilla: Private, Multilingual AI Browsing

#58

Post by Vinnl »

mixcocam wrote: post #26

Would be very cool if you could type a long query and the model would just build an advanced google search query using what you typed. You could even ship a tiny model in the browser itself that does that. Something like: "blog posts which talk about using sending emails to yourself as a notes taking mechanism". The output could look like: "note taking" OR "notes" ("emailing yourself" OR "email to myself" OR "email y…

I think that's roughly what duck.ai is doing? If I type that in there I see it generating some search queries and then generating a list of links based on the different result pages.

Re: Mistral X Mozilla: Private, Multilingual AI Browsing

#59

Post by walrus01 »

Iolaum wrote: post #44
julenx wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The privacy policy for Smart Window[1] indicates that prompts are not only sent to an LLM provider (Mistral in this case), but also to Mozilla servers first. > The assistant sends the full prompt (including your query, any relevant Memories, and any additional relevant browsing context) to a Mozilla server. > > Upon receipt, Mozilla forwards the request to a third-party large language model (LLM) on your behalf. The…

Some years ago Firefox was the go to browser if you wanted to have "some" privacy in your browsing (together with uBlock origin). With news like this I m really wondering if my views are outdated and I need to to some good researching on maintaining some privacy in what I m browsing.

Mozilla has been in a bit of a recursive feedback loop death spiral for years now of: Browser loses market share -> try some weird thing -> very few people like or use it -> browser loses market share -> management says "oh shit we're losing market share we better try some weird thing"

I say this as a person that uses firefox with ublock origin 99.5% of the time. It's better in my opinion than Chrome. I can at least easily turn off the enabled by default crap features. Like the advertising and sponsored news links on the default new tab page.

Re: Mistral X Mozilla: Private, Multilingual AI Browsing

#60

Post by mossTechnician »

julenx wrote: post #18
peri-cl wrote: post #5

This is an excellent use case for completely local, small model inference, yet for inexplicable reasons Mozilla wants to normalize uploading your entire private browsing history to a cloud. These (Mistral's and Mozilla's) marketing pages aren't candid enough to clearly explain the difference between local and cloud inference, and that they're asking you to consent to enabling the latter. I'd call that the bare minimu…

The privacy policy for Smart Window[1] indicates that prompts are not only sent to an LLM provider (Mistral in this case), but also to Mozilla servers first. > The assistant sends the full prompt (including your query, any relevant Memories, and any additional relevant browsing context) to a Mozilla server. > > Upon receipt, Mozilla forwards the request to a third-party large language model (LLM) on your behalf. The…

This sentence is eye-opening:

  > Smart Window infers information about you based on your interactions with the assistant and your Firefox browsing activity, including websites you have visited. This may include activity outside of Smart Window (such as in classic windows)...
Privacy-minded users who want to try this feature would need to create a totally separate browser profile to avoid data leaks.
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