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I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
401–410 of 782 posts
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#402The only place I can think of where I might actually find AI useful but AI is simply not there yet is for the browser to analyze the page super quickly and remove junk - ads, analytics, cookie prompts, too much extra spacing, "AI mode" buttons, the microphone button on YouTube search, YouTube Shorts and community posts etc. Basically, I should be able to tell AI to remove something and it should be able to do it instantly.
The current AI is not there yet at least not in terms of speed.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just finished listening to the first episode of "Acquired" on Google and it ended with Google pushing Google Plus into everything in an effort to compete with Facebook in social networking. It really hampered all their other offerings. https://www.acquired.fm Acquired podcast does long (2 4-hour episodes on Google) episodes on various companies, mostly tech but recently Trader Joe's
Do they talk about Trader Joe’s illegal union busting and attempts to get the national labor relations board disbanded ?
You could probably ask an LLM to listen and answer this question
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#404I think "nobody i know" and nobody are different things. Mozilla wants more firefox users. there are "AI browsers" and ai integrated browsing is becoming more and more the norm. Mozilla is doing the right thing here, the features are there but unobtrusive. But down the road, I fully expect Mozilla to do whatever they have to do to remain in the game. Their small market share is hurting the entire internet, they can't…
Mozilla really just needs to do three things: allow adblocking, have feature parity with Chrome, and render HTML correctly. Currently they've at least got one of the three.
doesn’t 3 imply 2? aren’t people just affectively asking for “something like chrome but with ad blocking”?
what I’m most concerned about is that pretty much all browsers except safari and firefox use Chromium’s rendering engine. for me that alone is a reason for firefox to have to exist.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#405Does anyone want AI in anything? I can see the value of navigating to an LLM and asking specific questions, but generally speaking I don't want that just running / waiting on my machine as I open a variety of applications. It's a huge waste of resources and for most normal people is an edge case.
They need to access your data somehow
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#406Go to about:config and set browser.ml.enabled to false and throw in browser.ml.chat.enabled (false) for good measure. Done.
You'd think so, but you also need to set browser.ml.chat.menu to false to remove a context menu item.
I think the option to disable the context menu item is right in said context menu. Best place to put the option honestly, I wish all AI features had a disable button right next to them.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#407Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was a sloppy statement, but is broadly speaking, true. For overwhelming citations, https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... (HN Search of posts from Matt Stoller's BIG Newsletter, which focuses on corporate monopolies and power in the US). https://www.thebignewsletter.com/about > The Problem: America is in a monopoly crisis. A monopoly is, at its core, a private government that sets the term…
That geographic concentration is a real thing. I think part of the Mozilla problem is that they are based in San Francisco which puts them in touch with people from Facebook and Google and OpenAI every frickin' day and they are just so seeped in the FOMO Dilemma [1] that they can't hear the objection to NFT and AI features that users, particularly Firefox users, hate. [2] I'd really like to see Mozilla move anywhere…
My two cents is Mozilla should be in a European tech hub, with some component of their funding coming from the EU, where the EU's belief in regulation and nation state efforts to protect humans exceeds that of the US.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#408I don't want AI to have any of my data. Past, present or future.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#409I use AI in Firefox all the time. Obviously it seems like I'm in a minority.
* I summarize articles.
* When I need more context to understand an article, I ask AI what I'm missing.
* When I'm writing up something important, I ask AI to proofread it for me.
* When I'm using productivity web apps, I ask AI to help me learn the features.
* When I'm filling out convoluted forms, I ask AI what the writer could have possibly intended.
Non-exhaustive list. Each of these things has resulted in huge leaps in my productivity.
Instead of using Firefox, I should probably be using something like the ChatGPT Atlas browser - except it's super important to me to use a browser that is open source and respects my privacy, lets me opt out from the Chromium hegemony, and allows me full control not only over which AI agent I use, but also full control over the browser itself. With Firefox's AI features, only the data I want sent to an AI gets sent to an AI, and I can have confidence that the rest of my data stays private.
The real key for me is that Firefox's AI features are unobtrusive. They show up when I invoke them, then go away when I don't want to see them anymore. The Mozilla team seems to have struck a perfect balance with that so far, even going so far as to add "turn this off permanently" options directly in every AI-related shortcut and menu. If you don't want to use AI in your browser, it's not like you even have to dig through the settings. Just click the button that shows up. Technically speaking, this is actually more annoying for people who do use the AI features - in a reversal to the usual trope, the AI users are the ones forced to stare at a menu item that's useless to them all day.
As for me, if other browsers start to really leapfrog Firefox in terms of the useful kind of AI integration that accelerates my daily browsing tasks, I'll probably reluctantly switch away at some point. Thankfully, the vast majority of this can probably be done at the extension level, and it probably should be, rather than being directly integrated into the browser itself. That would be a win/win for everyone in my book. I just really don't want to give up Firefox or give up my productivity tools.
And before anyone asks, I did not use AI to write or proofread any part of this post. This one's all me.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#410Does anyone want AI in anything? I can see the value of navigating to an LLM and asking specific questions, but generally speaking I don't want that just running / waiting on my machine as I open a variety of applications. It's a huge waste of resources and for most normal people is an edge case.
The existence of the features doesn’t bother me. It’s the constant nagging about them. I can’t use a google product without being harassed to the point of not being able to work by offers to “help me write” or whatever. Having the feature on a menu somewhere would be fine. The problem is the confluence of new features now becoming possible, and companies no longer building software for their users but as vehicles to…
So don't use Google products. I'm not trying to be snarky but, other than at work I suppose, it's not that hard to avoid them.