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Mozilla right now (Digital Painting)

davidrevoy.com

31–35 of 35 posts

Re: Mozilla right now (Digital Painting)

#31
post #7

There are a lot of reasons to not like Mozilla, but it's crazy to be against them for AI. A browser is literally a user agent . What well-funded org should be entrusted with making an open source agent for the user instead?

> There are a lot of reasons to not like Mozilla

Correct.

> but it's crazy to be against them for AI.

Disagreed.

> A browser is literally a user agent.

In the same way that a car is literally just some wheels. It's overly-reductionist to the point of being adversarial.

> What well-funded org should be entrusted with making an open source agent for the user instead?

What does that have to do with the topic at hand? Maybe if you didn't try to strip the context (Mozilla, it's reputation, it's actions, it's incentives, and how this AI initiative conflicts with the userbase' expectations and references therein) all this would seem a lot less "crazy" even if you still disagree.

Mozilla's users aren't being unreasonable or irrational for voicing criticisms here.

Sure, there's plenty of blind-hate for AI. But even many of us that aren't don't like the way Mozilla is going about this for a number of very valid reasons/concerns well beyond "I don't like AI"

Re: Mozilla right now (Digital Painting)

#32
post #7

There are a lot of reasons to not like Mozilla, but it's crazy to be against them for AI. A browser is literally a user agent . What well-funded org should be entrusted with making an open source agent for the user instead?

A browser is there for retrieving documents on behalf of the user, not to add its own spin to it. It's already bad with everyone and their dog wanted to abuse the user computation power with "apps" where it should be simple forms and listing.

Ad-blocking and reader mode is "adding its own spin" (or rather removing that of the original).

The problem is not that a browser should not act intelligently on behalf of the user. The problem is that what is usually called "AI" is known to sometimes act erratically and invasively, and also consume a lot of (local) resources. That is, the "AI" is not trustworthy enough. And the key feature of Firefox for much of its audience is that it's more trustworthy than the browser named after a particular shiny transition metal.

Re: Mozilla right now (Digital Painting)

#34
post #17
post #7

There are a lot of reasons to not like Mozilla, but it's crazy to be against them for AI. A browser is literally a user agent . What well-funded org should be entrusted with making an open source agent for the user instead?

The AI hate is unreasonably strong right now. People are acting like adding one feature they don't like or need to a browser is a borderline critical offense because it is an AI feature. I find it shocking how quickly the public in the US/EU developed this sort of hate towards one of the most interesting technology of the last decades.

It is interesting, but that's not the feature that people hate. They hate the monitoring, the power consumption, the inaccuracy, and the social and intellectual stupification.

I use LLMs quite frequently, but there are some places I do not want them. "Use AI to chat with your PDF!" The only thing I'd want to have it remotely touch in my browser is translations.

Re: Mozilla right now (Digital Painting)

#35
post #26
post #3

Should have made the bird an anthropomorphized version of the Firebird phoenix IMO (For the younger hackers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mozilla_Phoenix_logo_vect... )

It looks like that because it's a "stochastic parrot".

ok that makes more sense now
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