Say NO to AI in the #Firefox browser - have your say here;
People hate the term AI and so Mozilla were always going to struggle with providing modern functionality, as let’s face it, the Internet is embracing AI whether we like it or not
There’s AI in many forms in Firefox such as how it predicts the page you want to revisit from the address bar and translates content locally on device. If these AI capabilities were moved to extensions, it would probably significantly reduce the benefit users get from Firefox and likely prevent other useful features such as privacy preserving AI alternatives.
This is poignant. AI as we know it is basically what we were calling machine learning a couple years ago. The same people that are very vocally complaining about the advent of a smarter browser, are the same people that bemoan Mozilla for depending on Google for financing. Somehow they want a browser that only the most devout privacy evangelists would use and they want a browser that is self-sustained through diverse deals, none of which they’re able to see or feel.
I feel like there’s a lot of disingenuous Firefox supporters who want a utopia browser and refuse to allow Mozilla to do anything to evolve the browser. These same people talk up all the Firefox forks and that change a few defaults and yet bemoan everything Mozilla does that makes those forks possible. It’s boring.
- I want a browser with on device translations.
- I want a browser with smart page suggestions.
- I want a browser that’s able to summarise articles.
- I want a browser that can fact-check pages.
@sabreW4K3 why don’t you fork Firefox to do all those unnecessary for everyone else things? Firefox needs to stay unbloated, unAI’d, and most importantly sincere to it’s original intents.
“I want a browser that can fact-check pages” 🤣 AI cannot fact check itself let alone anything else. Why don’t you do your own fact checking?
My £0.02
cannot fact check itself let alone anything else. Why don’t you do your own fact checking?
Why don’t I render my own CSS? Firefox has the ability to pull alternative sources in the background and compare against my current page. What is wrong with that?
It’s… Challenging. Like the pet eating thing, there are many sources saying it’s true and many saying it’s false. Official sources can lie (Russia came to mind for no reason whatsoever), so we rely on sources we already trust, which is tricky and even subjective.
I imagine that “if in Fox then False” is a good start, but aside from that I can only think it getting extra sources, also a challenge without real time web crawling of the internet, were google and Microsoft are already light years ahead.
But if Mozilla can, for example create a sources list and even charge for the ability to be a default on said sources list, wouldn’t that be a double win? The problem with things being unreliable can be dealt with via language. Like big red text saying don’t trust this blindly.
Pay to be the “truth” on a fact checking tool? Fox news is very interested.
Aren’t Google and Bing and others paying to be featured in Firefox. What’s the difference?
the Internet is embracing AI whether we like it or not
And if not, the feature gets removed again in a year or so. So far it doesn’t really seem like it’s in your face or anything, so 🤷
But the problem is, people think that there’s one single development team working on Firefox and if they’re working on AI, they’re not improving or working on anything else.
As a data scientist, trust me: you don’t want us developing ANYTHING else. You guys dogged a bullet having us busy.
- I want a browser that can fact-check web pages
- I want a browser that can keep track of my cryptocurrency investments
- I want a browser that can monitor the market for Beanie Babies
- I want a browser with a built-in Pokemon Go panel
- I want a browser that can detect when I’m about to post cringe
- I want a browser with tail fins and shag carpeting
Come on Mozilla, make it happen! As an added bonus, all that added UI cruft will probably mean new places to show advertising at the users.
The biggest issue with Mozilla if they didn’t decide to put some form of AI stuff in Firefox is that their competitors could use it as ammunition to fuel an as campaign painting Firefox as not only out of touch and outdated, but less secure because they don’t have AI security.
I can guarantee if average person, like my middle aged parents who aren’t very tech savvy, saw an ad pointing that out (no matter how untrue it is) I’d be told about it the next chance they got, proving they believe it.
They have to keep up with what their competitors are doing or get left behind and die a slow and painful death. AI is just the latest trend to be added, and Mozilla is just trying to keep up to ensure whatever remainder of normies still use Firefox don’t decide to abandon ship.
I personally don’t like it, but what other options are there?
Wise words ! The best option would be to add AI by default but let’s people to totally disable it either via
about:configor an uncheck box in the options.Let’s be real, only tech savy people mess around with about:config nobs so this wouldn’t bother casual users an give others the possibility to disable it.
Just want to clarify there’s no LLM integrated IN the browser that many seem to be assuming. This experimental feature loads an external chat window in the sidebar to another service.
the uses of ai that firefox has implemented are optional and great for accessibility. why would you oppose that?
@cupcakezealot I would oppose that because I don’t want ai infecting my computers or life. Having an “opt-out” simply isn’t good enough either. IF they deem it necessary to bow down and be submissive to AI, the must make it opt-in and not infect the browser but make it an addon (read extension).
Anything else would undermine both their browser, and their relationship with their browser users.
If you want to use AI, use it, but don’t make it the default and/or force people to use it, simples
I don’t get why y’all are so mad about this. As long as the features are optional and I can easily turn them off in the settings, they don’t bother me at all.
Like people already said - they could be doing literally anything else. Have vacation time, fix any of the bugs, improve performance, anything at all. This is like adding a tattoo of shit to your chest. Sure, it’s your chest, but it’s also shit
On the other hand, Mozilla has ~750 employees all of whom are working on different projects at different times.
Their AI work is likely not preventing their development of other projects. Especially considering they are hiring for positions related to AI, I would imagine that current employee’s aren’t just filling in the gaps in the meantime, but are independent from each others departments.
I’m sure they have nothing else to do, I mean the market share shows they can just sit with thumbs in their asses. This shitty argument that this work is somehow free is a bad one
@unrushed233@lemmings.world AI watching (and reporting on) everything you browse using that browser right back to Mozilla, are you really that naive to believe this won’t happen?
@unrushed233@lemmings.world if they’re going to be forced into the browser, they should be opt-in, not opt-out.
When companies can answer this one simple question, “What specific problem does implementing AI (LLM, etc) solve?”, only then might I consider it.
I have heard of only one, maybe two, instances of AI solving a real problem and it has to do with helping a person to speak again, or to walk again, etc.
I have yet to be convinced of any specific problem AI is solving in a browser or an operating system.
And just because “the internet” is latching onto this latest thing, doesn’t mean it’s right. It just means people see a shiny and want more of it.
I would amend that to “What specific problem that users have reported does implementing AI solve”.
Sure, that, too. Problems are problems, irrespective of by whom and where they are discovered. And solutions should be matched to the problem. If AI is such a solution, great! But I’m not yet convinced that we need to use AI and be in search of problems (which is what CEOs are doing right now), hence my original comment.
Seems like a pointless waste of time for a first-party effort, when they could be… Idk, implementing the audio manipulation APIs that Discord relies on, or something.
But I don’t necessarily see direct harm from it either. Just useless.
I would but I get a 401 when I attempt to sign in.
I know it’s a functional Mozilla account because I use it every day for sync but here we are.