Nowadays I wonder if it's best practice to run everything in a desktop VM and not on your actual computer...
Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
611–620 of 1001 posts
Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#612Framing this as needing "consent" is deeply misguided. It's as silly as claiming that Microsoft Word installed an English language spellcheck dictionary without your consent. It's just part of the software. You consented to installing the software and having it autoupdate. That covers it. Now we can argue whether or not it's an appropriate amount of disk space or bandwidth to use, but that's just a reasonable practic…
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Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#613Masterclass. Hope some qualified lawyers just got wet.
Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#614Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is changing the product significantly. I wanted/consented to a browser. Nothing more. Agreeable, nothing new with the browser vendor pushing plugins down our throat which are not browser core features, nevertheless not right.
It’s actually really useful for web devs to have access to a local model. Whether or not browsers should bundle their own rather than using the system-provided model(s) is up for debate, however. For the time being, though, Google does have some of the better small ones. Furthermore, users aren’t going to want to have to wait for an extra thing to download before their web apps can use AI. That’s the thing… Without c…
> really useful for web devs to have access to a local model
I’m not opposed to this. I don’t want Google, an advertising quasi monopoly, to be auto-installing its own AIs on everyone’s computers.
Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#615Framing this as needing "consent" is deeply misguided. It's as silly as claiming that Microsoft Word installed an English language spellcheck dictionary without your consent. It's just part of the software. You consented to installing the software and having it autoupdate. That covers it. Now we can argue whether or not it's an appropriate amount of disk space or bandwidth to use, but that's just a reasonable practic…
In principle I agree, but chrome has an auto-update setup and using that mechanism to download several GBs of data that is not critical to the app itself is cause for question.
Chrome is not entitled to my disk space just because I installed it and Microsoft has been excoriated for the exact same behaviour with AI.
Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#616[dead]
Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#617Framing this as needing "consent" is deeply misguided. It's as silly as claiming that Microsoft Word installed an English language spellcheck dictionary without your consent. It's just part of the software. You consented to installing the software and having it autoupdate. That covers it. Now we can argue whether or not it's an appropriate amount of disk space or bandwidth to use, but that's just a reasonable practic…
You're missing that this is anti-AI activism
We don't have AI. We have language models trained by rapacious companies on copyrighted material with no concern for copyright violations and with a penchant for intentionally anthropomorhizing their models.
I'm an anti corporate malfeasance activist.
Hacker News and it's underemployed and underpaid user base gets these two confused all the time. I assure you, your tolerance for language models, or your willingness to use them, will have _zero_ impacts on your pay scale in the coming decade.
Finally you should be aware that Google markets this addition as an "anti fraud" and "anti spam" feature. They should have to justify that, I shouldn't have to justify my expectations as a consumer.
Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#618Framing this as needing "consent" is deeply misguided. It's as silly as claiming that Microsoft Word installed an English language spellcheck dictionary without your consent. It's just part of the software. You consented to installing the software and having it autoupdate. That covers it. Now we can argue whether or not it's an appropriate amount of disk space or bandwidth to use, but that's just a reasonable practic…
If someone puts a camera and a microphone on devices that don't need them, then it's a) pushing up the price of goods for everyone with features that mainly serve corporate, b) there are bad actors out there even if you think corporate is a good one, c) no reason to think corporate is a good actor.
Shipping an AI model with a browser is starting to look like sticking cameras on ALL glasses, not just smart glasses, regardless of whether anyone wants that. Saying this is fine and not unusual is clearly motivated reasoning and just normalizes the surveillance state. It's very obvious the way this ends. Browser-based models will eventually be using your computer at the edge to save corporate money in the cloud while they do ever more expensive and invasive stuff to profile you.
Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#619Framing this as needing "consent" is deeply misguided. It's as silly as claiming that Microsoft Word installed an English language spellcheck dictionary without your consent. It's just part of the software. You consented to installing the software and having it autoupdate. That covers it. Now we can argue whether or not it's an appropriate amount of disk space or bandwidth to use, but that's just a reasonable practic…
It is changing the product significantly. I wanted/consented to a browser. Nothing more. Agreeable, nothing new with the browser vendor pushing plugins down our throat which are not browser core features, nevertheless not right.
> I wanted/consented to a browser. Nothing more.
I agree. I want just a browser. No non-browser-related features, such as JavaScript, CSS, WebRTC, WebGPU, Wasm, etc. Nope, just browsing.
Edit: /s, obviously
Re: Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
#620Earlier quoted context omitted.
A spellchecker is a standard function of a text program. Since when is an AI part of the browser? On top it’s another abuse of their market domination. What if users prefer other models?
By that reasoning, any novel/cutting-edge addition to a browser or other software is wrong? Every standard was new at some point.
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