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No AI* Here – A Response to Mozilla's Next Chapter

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Re: No AI* Here – A Response to Mozilla's Next Chapter

#191

Post by Wowfunhappy »

dotancohen wrote: post #45
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [Update]: as I posted below, sample use cases would include translation, article summarization, asking questions from a long wiki page... and maybe with some agents built-in as well: parallelizing a form filling/ecom task, having the agent transcribe/translate an audio/video in real time, etc I don't want any of this built into my web browser. Period. This is coming from someone who pays for a Claude Max subscripti…

Reread your post with your evil PM hat on. You just said "I'm willing to pay for AI". That's all they hear.

I'm willing to pay for housing in New York. I'm not willing to pay for housing in Antarctica. The reasons being (1) I already have an apartment in New York and do not need another one and (2) I don't want to live in Antarctica.

Re: No AI* Here – A Response to Mozilla's Next Chapter

#192

Post by MrAlex94 »

yunohn wrote: post #180
MrAlex94 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking back with fresh eyes, I definitely think I could’ve presented what I’m trying to say better. On a purely technical play, you’re right that I’m drawing a distinction that may not hold up purely on technical grounds. Maybe the better framing is: I trust constrained, single purpose models with somewhat verifiable outputs (seeing text go in, translated text go out, compare its consistency) more than I trust gener…

I still don’t understand what you mean by “what they do with your data” - because it sounds like exfiltration fear mongering, whereas LLMs are a static series of weights. If you don’t explicitly call your “send_data_to_bad_actor” function with the user’s I/O, nothing can happen.

I disagree that it’s fear mongering. Have we not had numerous articles on HN about data exfiltration in recent memory? Why would an LLM that is in the drivers seat of a browser (not talking about current feature status in Firefox wrt to sanitised data being interacted with) not have the same pitfalls?

Seems as if we’d be 3 for 3 in the “agents rule of 2” in the context of the web and a browser?

> [A] An agent can process untrustworthy inputs

> [B] An agent can have access to sensitive systems or private data

> [C] An agent can change state or communicate externally

https://simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/2/new-prompt-injection-pa...

Even if we weren’t talking about such malicious hypotheticals, hallucinations are a common occurrence as are CLI agents doing things it thinks best, sometimes to the detriment of the data it interacts with. I personally wouldn’t want my history being modified or deleted, same goes with passwords and the like.

It is a bit doomerist, I doubt it’ll have such broad permissions but it just doesn’t sit well which I suppose is the spirit of the article and the stance Waterfox takes.

Re: No AI* Here – A Response to Mozilla's Next Chapter

#193

Post by v3xro »

onion2k wrote: post #155
jrjeksjd8d wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be more charitable to TFA, machine translation is a field where there aren't great alternatives and the downside is pretty limited. If something is in another language you don't read it at all. You can translate a bunch of documents and benchmark the result and demonstrate that the model doesn't completely change simple sentences. Another related area is OCR - there are sometimes mistakes, but it's tractable to cr…

and demonstrate that the model doesn't completely change simple sentences A nefarious model would work that way though. The owner wouldn't want it to be obvious. It'd only change the meaning of some sentences some of the time, but enough to nudge the user's understanding of the translated text to something that the model owner wants. For example, imagine a model that detects the sentiment of text about Russian milita…

That's not a technical problem though is it? I don't see legal scenarios where unverified machine translation is acceptable - you need to get a certified translator to sign off on any translations and I also don't see how changing that would be a good thing.

Re: No AI* Here – A Response to Mozilla's Next Chapter

#194

Post by graycat »

As I read the post by MrAlex94, I noticed a remark that the browser Chrome is good as a user agent. To me, that's terrific! Looks like I'll have to consider Chrome again.`

Here are what I find as reasons to scream about Mozilla:

Popups:

(a) Several times a day, my attention and concentration get interrupted by, for me, the unwelcome announcement that there is a new version I can download. A new version can have changes I don't like and genuine bugs. Sure, I could keep a copy of my favorite version from history, but that is system management mud wrestling and interruption of my work.

(b) Now I get told several times a day that my computer and cell phone can share access to a Web page. In this action Mozilla covers up what that page was showing I wanted it to show. No thanks. When I'm at my computer, AMD 8 core processor, all my files and software tools, and 1 Gbps optical fiber connection to the Internet and looking at a Web page, I want nothing to do with a cell phone's presentation of a, that, Web page.

(c) Some URLs are a dozen lines long and Mozilla finds ways to present such URLs with all their lines and pursue clearly their main objective -- cover up the desired content.

Mozilla needs to make their covering up, changing, the screen optional or just eliminated.

Want me to donate? You've mentioned as little as $10. Deal: Raise the $10 by a factor of 5 AND quit covering up my content and interrupting my work, and we've got a deal.

Re: No AI* Here – A Response to Mozilla's Next Chapter

#195

Post by ruszki »

wkat4242 wrote: post #181
ruszki wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly doubt that no information would be worse than wrong information. Both wars in Ukraine and Gaza show this very clearly.

I just use it for personal information, I'm not involved in any wars :) I don't base any decisions on it, for example if I buy something I don't go by just AI stuff to make a decision. I use the AI to screen reviews, things like that (generally I prefer really deep review and not glossy consumer-focused ones). Then I read the reviews that are suitable to me. And even reading an article about those myself doesn't make…

Even if you know about and act against mis- and disinformation, it affects you, and you voluntarily increase your exposure to it. And the situation is already terrible.

I gave the example of wars, because it’s obvious, even for you, and you won’t relativize away the same way how you just did with AI misinformation, which affects you the exact same way.

Re: No AI* Here – A Response to Mozilla's Next Chapter

#197

Post by takluyver »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #100
user3939382 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox should look like Librewolf first of all, Librewolf shouldn’t have to exist. Mozilla’s privacy stuff is marketing bullshit just like Apple. It shouldn’t be doing ANYTHING that isn’t local only unless it’s explicitly opt in or user UI action oriented. The LLM part is absurd bc the entire overton window is in the wrong place.

It's frankly desperate trend chasing from management that lost after starting from near total market domination, and have no idea what to do now.

> starting from near total market domination

That's not really accurate: Firefox peaked somewhere around 30% market share back when IE was dominant, and then Chrome took over the top spot within a few years of launching.

FWIW, I think there's just no good move for Mozilla. They're competing against 3 of the biggest companies in the world who can cross-subsidise browser development as a loss-leader, and can push their own browsers as the defaults on their respective platforms. The most obvious way to make money from a browser - harvesting user data - is largely unavailable to them.

Re: No AI* Here – A Response to Mozilla's Next Chapter

#199

Post by charcircuit »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #189
charcircuit wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets it wrong because the current "AI" for filling out forms is extremely weak and brittle compared to the general language models we have now.

Do you have an example form field that a general language model could fill out better than a human + highly focussed deterministic algorithm?

Ecommerce checkout. Filling out my address, billing adress, and credit card information. Things like drop downs or different formatting can mess up the current basic ones, but it really shouldn't be that hard for AI to figure out how to fill out such information it knows about me into the form.

Re: No AI* Here – A Response to Mozilla's Next Chapter

#200

Post by b00ty4breakfast »

I switched to Waterfox about a year ago because my poor old linux box just couldn't keep up with the latest Firefox version (especially the Snap package! I literally unusable for me) and I am very thankful that they aren't going to be including any of the LLM crud that Mozilla has been talking up.

I get the utility that this stuff can have for certain types of activities but on top of not having great hardware to run the dang things, I just don't find any of the proposed use-cases that compelling for me personally.

It's just nice that the totalizing self-insistence of AI tech hasn't gobbled up every corner of the tech space, even if those crevices and niches are getting smaller by the day.

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