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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

#211

Post by nottorp »

runjake wrote: post #121
tdeck wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside: Does anyone actually use summarization features? I've never once been tempted to "summarize" because when I read something I either want to read the entire thing, or look for something specific. Things I want summarized, like academic papers, already have an abstract or a synopsis.

Yes, several times a day. I use summarization for webpages, messages, documents and YouTube videos. It’s super handy. I mainly use a custom prompt using ChatGPT via the Raycast app and the Raycast browser extension. That said, I don’t feel comfortable with the level of AI being shoved into browsers by their vendors.

Aren't you worried it will fuck up your comprehension skills? Reading or listening.

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

#212

Post by Schlaefer »

BoredPositron wrote: post #20
infotainment wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 100% -- the AI features already in Firefox, for the most part, rely on local models. (Right now there is translation and tab-grouping, IIRC.) Local based AI features are great and I wish they were used more often, instead of just offloading everything to cloud services with questionable privacy.

If we look at the last AI features they implemented it doesn't like they are betting on local models anymore.

Which ones? Translation is local. Preview summarization is local. Image description generation is local. Tab grouping is local. Sidebar can also show a locally hosted page.

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

#213

Post by Orygin »

vivzkestrel wrote: post #141

if kagi can make a search engine that charges users, why dont we have a 1$/month open source browser whose code can be verified but people pay to use monthly?

Paying to get a browser fork with less features? At that point, just pay $1 to Mozilla for firefox instead..

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

#214

Post by nottorp »

clueless wrote: post #5

This whole backlash to firefox wanting to introduce AI feels a little knee-jerky. We don't know if firefox might want to roll out their own locally hosted LLM model that then they plug into.. and if so, if would cut down on the majority of the knee jerk complaints. I think people want AI in the browser, they just don't want it to be the big-corp hosted AI... [Update]: as I posted below, sample use cases would include…

It doesn't matter what they exactly want to do, what it matters is they're wasting resources on it instead of keeping the ... browsing part ... up to date.

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

#215

Post by ACCount37 »

jrjeksjd8d wrote: post #93
inkysigma wrote: post #32

> Large language models are something else entirely*. They are black boxes. You cannot audit them. You cannot truly understand what they do with your data. You cannot verify their behaviour. And Mozilla wants to put them at the heart of the browser and that doesn't sit well. Am I being overly critical here or is this kind of a silly position to have right after talking about how neural machine translation is okay? Ma…

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…

LLMs are great because of exactly that: they solve things that have no other solutions.

(And also things that have other solutions, but where "find and apply that other solution" has way more overhead than "just ask an LLM".)

There is no deterministic way to "summarize this research paper, then evaluate whether the findings are relevant and significant for this thing I'm doing right now", or "crawl this poorly documented codebase, tell me what this module does". And the alternative is sinking your own time in it - while you could be doing something more important or more fun.

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

#216

Post by nottorp »

Orygin wrote: post #210
fsflover wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that on Windows all unwanted features eventually become mandatory, with no way of switching them off. With Firefox, it never happens.

If you listen to the doomers in this thread, it will. They "will" remove the option from settings, hide it in about:config, then later on remove it from there! Of course none of that is true...

It's plausible because the team working on the settings screen will be reassigned to the "AI".

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

#217

Post by LandR »

zmmmmm wrote: post #171

I just want FireFox to focus on building an absolutely awesome plugin API that exposes as much power and flexibility as possible - with the best possible security sandbox and permissions model to go with it. Then everyone who wants AI can have it and those that don't .... don't.

I just want an adblocker and tree style vertical tabs, where the tab bar minimises when the mouse isn't over it.

That's literally my entire use case for using firefox.

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

#218

Post by Arisaka1 »

zmmmmm wrote: post #171

I just want FireFox to focus on building an absolutely awesome plugin API that exposes as much power and flexibility as possible - with the best possible security sandbox and permissions model to go with it. Then everyone who wants AI can have it and those that don't .... don't.

>Then everyone who wants AI can have it and those that don't .... don't.

The current trajectory of products with integrated online worries me, due to the fact that the average computer/phone user isn't as tech-savvy as the average HN reader, to the point where they are unable to toggle stuff they genuinely never asked for, but they begrudgingly accept them because they're... there.

My mother complained about AI mode on Google Chrome, and the "press tab" on the address bar, but she's old and doesn't even know how to connect to the Wi-Fi. Are we safe to assume that she belongs to the percentage of Google Chrome users that they embrace AI, based on the fact that she doesn't know how to turn it off, and there's no easy way to go about it?

I'm willing to bet that Google's reports will assume so, and demonstrate a wide adoption of AI by Chrome users to stakeholders, which will be leveraged as a fact that everyone loves it.

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

#219

Post by yunohn »

MrAlex94 wrote: post #192
yunohn wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pro…

I believe you are conflating multiple concepts to prove a flaky point.

Again, unless your agent has access to a function that exfiltrates data, it is impossible for it to do so. Literally!

You do not need to provide any tools to an LLM that summarizes or translates websites, manages your open tabs, etc. This can be done fully locally in a sandbox.

Linking to simonw does not make your argument valid. He makes some great points, but he does not assert what you are claiming at any point.

Please stop with this unnecessary fear mongering and make a better argument.

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

#220

Post by viraptor »

Maxion wrote: post #209
viraptor wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.perplexity.ai/comet https://chatgpt.com/atlas/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/copilot-mode https://www.genspark.ai/browser https://www.operaneon.com/ https://www.diabrowser.com/ https://fellou.ai/ And many many more...

Do they have any users, though?

Would you like to research this and tell us?
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