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I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

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Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#621

Post by mikkupikku »

burnte wrote: post #527
creatonez wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is, a chatbot sidebar isn't something new to try, it's a tired dead-end idea that never delivered any value to the multiple competitors that tried the exact same thing. Firefox's implementation of a chatbot sidebar is especially cookie-cutter because it just plugs into existing LLM APIs, it doesn't make use of local AI the way the alt text generator and local machine translation features do. What were they th…

The absolute last thing I need in my browser is AI. What's it going to do, read the page then rewrite it for me to read? Why would I not just read the page? Is it going to generate images of the webpage for me? AI is a great tool, but it's not useful in every circumstance. Right now product managers are trying to think of any place to shoehorn AI into regardless of it being a good idea or useful just to be able to pu…

> What's it going to do, read the page then rewrite it for me to read?

In some cases I do find that useful, but more generally I find that having a quick chat about a document after reading it is a good way to interrogate my own understanding of the document.

I agree that it's probably not for everybody. But I do think that by putting tools like this out there, Firefox users may find unanticipated uses for it, which in turn may inform more thoughtfully implemented futures in the future. You've got to walk before you can run.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#622

Post by seszett »

kelvinjps10 wrote: post #465
vidarh wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst one w/Google is how they've highjacked long-press on the power button on Android, and you can change what it does but your options are arbitrarily limited.

I hate it how they're gonna change the power button to something else that's not power options. Just to push their annoying google assistant

What are you guys talking about? I have a Pixel 8, didn't install Lineage OS on it, and my power button works fine?

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#623

Post by moron4hire »

PaulHoule wrote: post #508
xp84 wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the sad part is that much of the reason we have to have subscriptions is that there’s a very real ongoing cost just to avoid the platform owner breaking the software with OS changes (and of course Apple is 10x worse than any others, most Windows XP-era .exe files work perfectly fine on Windows 11 today). Why do we need OS changes though? Well practically we don’t. But the platform owners all want to move new har…

Operating systems and the software that comes with them are a fat target for security problems. There's "new hardware" in turns of new phones, laptops and the core components of desktops but also peripherals from things you plug into USB and things like watches and AirPods that you might want to use with your existing phone. Both Linux and Windows run on generic hardware so they need to handle whatever AMD, Intel, De…

Everyone wants to complain about the "bloat" in Windows and macOS (and fair enough, there is a lot of bloat and cruft) but blame it all on capitalism, when Linux has kept apace in growth rate the whole time. My Linux installs have been 'round about 50% the size of my Windows installs these last 15 years, never really straying far. If we ask ourselves, "Why does Linux need to keep growing?", I think we can easily see that OS churn and growth is not just "shareholder value gotta go up."

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#624

Post by mikkupikku »

TZubiri wrote: post #582
mikkupikku wrote: post #466

Speak for yourself, I do want to see Mozilla experimenting with new features and functionality opened up by new technology. Politically motivated technological stagnation is little more than a slow death, Mozilla should at least be trying new things. And yes, they will get some of it wrong. It's new technology, nobody really knows how to use it yet. Mozilla should be on the forefront of figuring it out.

But LLMs became possible precisely due to centralized server, their economies of scale, and their capacity to train on user data. All of which are against the core tenets of locality, privacy and low cost (gratis) of FOSS. Sorry guys, but this one is not for you. Unless you go all in on microchips so powerful that they enable local LLMs, but even that seems to be outside of the FOSS competency as it involves hardware…

This is precisely the sort of political demand for stagnation that I'm talking about. Doing your best to make RMS proud isn't going to make this technology go away.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#626

Post by dwedge »

roncesvalles wrote: post #345
notepad0x90 wrote: post #110

I 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…

You didn't even read 6 sentences into TFA. 52/52 of the closed-beta testers of this feature want it removed.

I'm fairly sure the article was either badly written or misleading about this. They mention closed beta testing and in the next paragraph mention 52 responses to the announcement at the time of writing. So 52 comments, from anyone. Very different thing.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#627

Post by wartywhoa23 »

everdrive wrote: post #4

Does 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.

How dare you deny your AI overlord an oportunity to train itself further on your data for free?!

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#628

Post by dwedge »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #497
notepad0x90 wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that doesn't matter, grandma isn't a beta tester. I can tell you first-hand a lot of people are installing these ai browsers, even in enterprise environments. You get ahead of it or get left behind.

Statistics disagrees with you to such a degree that this statement ignores reality. If you poll 52 people, and you get 52 identical results, even with population bias , you're done. If there was a mix of "yes" and "no", less so, but 100% "no" after 50+ samples is statistically damning. Because remember: the bias is towards people who care about Firefox enough to post in an official forum, so that's the core audience,…

They didn't poll 52 people, the 52 are comments

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#630

Post by dwedge »

burnte wrote: post #501
clueless wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is 52 users representative??

It was 52 OF 52, 100% of them. That's what makes it significant. Literally not a single dissenting voice. is 52 definitive? No, but that early it's unusual that 100% said no.

I'm fairly sure the 52 are comments to their announcement and not beta testers. There may be some overlap but not enough data to say 100%
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