Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

waterfox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 344 posts

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

#281

Post by BoredPositron »

Schlaefer wrote: post #212
BoredPositron wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The last feature was the sidebar and Google lens integration. For the sidebar the "can" does the heavy lifting but you should also include that it's hidden and won't sync if you use a local page...

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

#282

Post by [deleted] »

phyzome wrote: post #113
someothherguyy wrote: post #44

This feature can be easily disabled with policies: https://mozilla.github.io/policy-templates/#generativeai https://mozilla.github.io/policy-templates/#preferences https://searchfox.org/firefox-main/source/browser/app/profil... https://searchfox.org/firefox-main/source/modules/libpref/in...

Even if we ignore things like "they're chasing AI fads instead of better things" and "they're adding attack surface" and so forth, and just focus on the disabling feature toggles thing... ... Mozilla has re-enabled AI-related toggles that people have disabled. (I've heard this from others and observed it myself.) They also keep adding new ones that aren't controlled by a master switch. They're getting pretty user-hos…

[deleted]

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

#283

Post by [deleted] »

andai wrote: post #139
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.

Yeah, basically every 15 minute YouTube video, because the amount of actual content I care about is usually 1-2 sentences, and usually ends up being the first sentence of an LLM summary of the transcript. If something has actual substance I'll watch the whole thing, but that's maybe 10% of videos I find in experience.

[deleted]

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

#284

Post by nottorp »

fsflover wrote: post #272
johnnyanmac wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla hasn't had the benefit of the doubt for quite a while here. This isn't just one small kerfuffle coming out of nowhere. They say trust takes a lifetime to build and seconds to break ". We're years into it at this point.

> Mozilla hasn't had the benefit of the doubt for quite a while here In contrast to Google Chrome? This is just FUD. Ublock Origin is still working and will be working. Full customization is still there and isn't going away. All of that is unlike in Chrom(ium).

This is not a thread comparing Mozilla to Google. This is a thread where we worry about how a non google browsing alternative stays alive. Of course none of us posting here trusts Google.

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

#285

Post by someothherguyy »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #81
someothherguyy wrote: post #44

This feature can be easily disabled with policies: https://mozilla.github.io/policy-templates/#generativeai https://mozilla.github.io/policy-templates/#preferences https://searchfox.org/firefox-main/source/browser/app/profil... https://searchfox.org/firefox-main/source/modules/libpref/in...

This is like when people defend Windows 11's nonsense by saying "you can disable or remove that stuff". Yes, you can. But you shouldn't have to, and I personally prefer to use tools which don't shove useless things into the tool because it's trendy.

Well, you aren't the only person using a tool, and it probably matters more to those who are making things "trendy".

In general, how else would people "learn" about a feature unless it was enabled by default or the product nagged them?

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

#286

Post by dredmorbius »

nijave wrote: post #14
clueless wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, 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 All this would allow for a further breakdown of language barriers, and maybe the communities of various languages around the world could interact with each other much more on the s…

Super charged search on page would also be nice Agents (like a research agent) could also be interesting

Mozilla implementing a search feature which renders Google and/or its advertising capabilities irrelevant is highly unlikely so long as Mozilla is a financial vassal of Google.

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

#287

Post by someothherguyy »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #103
derekdahmer wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this different from linux? People happily spend hours customizing defaults in their OS. It’s usually a point of praise for open source software.

Bad defaults are bad defaults, and "you can turn them off" is not a good excuse for bad defaults continuing to be bad defaults

It is the default in every major browser at this point.

https://chromeenterprise.google/policies/#GenAiDefaultSettin...

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

#288

Post by immibis »

skylurk wrote: post #202
schoen wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an older tradition of rule-based machine translation. In these methods, someone really does understand exactly what the program does, in a detailed way; it's designed like other programs, according to someone's explicit understanding. There's still active research in this field; I have a friend who's very deep into it. The trouble is that statistical MT (the things that became neural net MT) started achieving…

Yep, some domains have no hard rules at all. Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

It's completely possible to write a parser that outputs every possible parse of "time flies like an arrow", and then try interpreting each one and discard ones that don't make sense according to some downstream rules (unknown noun phrase: "time fly").

I did this for a text adventure parser, but it didn't work well because there are exponentially ways to group the words in a sentence like "put the ball on the bucket on the chair on the table on the floor"

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

#290

Post by yunohn »

koolala wrote: post #244
yunohn wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How, literally how? The LLM is provided a list of tab titles, and returns a classification/grouping. There is no reason nor design where you also provide it with full disk access or terminal rights. This is one of the most ignorant posts and comment sections I’ve seen on HN in a while.

Seems like a mean thing to say when the subject they were replying to was AI in general and not just the dumb tab grouping feature.

Great, because an LLM can’t “do” anything! Only an agent can, and only whichever functions/tools it has access to. So my point still stands.

Also I’m referring to the post, not this comment specifically.

Post reply on HN