- cross-posted to:
- firefox@fedia.io
- cross-posted to:
- firefox@fedia.io
“It’s safe to say that the people who volunteered to “shape” the initiative want it dead and buried. Of the 52 responses at the time of writing, all rejected the idea and asked Mozilla to stop shoving AI features into Firefox.”
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Hey all, just a reminder to keep the community rules in mind when commenting on this thread. Criticism in any direction is fine, but please maintain your civility and don’t stoop to ad-hominem etc. Thanks.
deleted by creator
If it can be proven that an LLM bot account is present on the instance masquerading as a human user, I would recommend you report the account for that reason/spam so that it can be investigated and removed per instance rule 4 after evidence is found.
Since they aren’t people, I’d say it’s pointless to reply to them with ad-hominem in the first place since it means nothing to them, and therefore reporting it would be the more effective action to take in any event.
The more AI is being pushed into my face, the more it pisses me off.
Mozilla could have made an extension and promote it on their extension store. Rather than adding cruft to their browser and turning it on by default.
The list of things to turn off to get a pleasant experience in Firefox is getting longer by the day. Not as bad as chrome, but still.
Oh this triggers me. There have been multiple good suggestions for Firefox in the past that are closed with nofix as “this can be provided by the community as an add-on”. Yet they shove the crappiest crap into the main browser now.
Rather than adding cruft to their browser and turning it on by default.
The second paragraph of the article:
The post stresses the feature will be opt-in and that the user “is in control.”
That being said, I agree with you that they should have made it an extension if they really wanted to make sure the user “is in control.”
You want AI in your browser? Just add <your favourite spying ad machine> as a “search engine” option, with a URL like
https://chatgpt.com/?q=%25s, with a shortcut like
@ai. You can then ask it anything right there in your search bar.Maybe also add one with a URL with some query pre-written like
https://chatgpt.com/?q=summarize this page for me: %sas
@aisor something, modern chatbots have the ability to make HTTP requests for you. Then if you want to summarize the page you’re on, you do Ctrl+L Ctrl+C @ais Ctrl+V Enter. There, I solved all your AI needs with 4 shortcuts without literally any client-side code.Emissions. Economic problems. Goading several people into suicide.
Like, if you ship a food item with harmful bacteria in it, it gets recalled. If you have a fatal design flaw in a car, it gets recalled. If your LLM encourages people to separate from their loved ones and kill themselves, nothing fucking happens.
Just render the page, page renderer.
monkey paw: curls
Yes, the page has been rendered by a large webpage model based on the URL.
Those unhappy have another option: use an AI‑free Firefox fork such as LibreWolf, Waterfox, or Zen Browser.
And I have taken that other option.
Also: Vanadium and/or Ironfox on Android.
A fork is great, but the more a fork deviates, the more issues there are likely to be. Firefox is already at low enough numbers that it’s not really sustainable.
Then Mozilla should start listening to their users instead of driving them away. I know I stopped using Firefox after being a regular user since launch because the AI nonsense became the last sta straw.
Yes but we shouldn’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
The good is other rendering engines currently in the works.
Then Mozilla should start listening to their users instead of driving them away.
I think the hope is to get more people in than losing them. But with Ai nobody will stay forever, because the time someone else makes a better Ai tool, they switch. Because Mozilla loses personality and uniqueness and start getting replaceable. … just like employees who are forced to use Ai instead their own work and knowledge.
My two biggest issues with a fork are: a) timely updates, they take a bit longer than the main version, and b) trust issues, I don’t trust most forks.
Try Phoenix for Firefox https://github.com/celenityy/Phoenix
What I don’t get: Isn’t Vanadium Chromium under the hood?
It is.
My understanding is that you go to Ironfox to optimize for privacy and Vanadium to optimize for security.
It depends on your threat model.
Either way, both are better on both fronts when compared to default Chrome or Firefox.
I think ive lost hope at this point to see AI being actually useful in any application except chat gpt and code editors.
Companies are struggling how to use Ai in their products because it actually doesnt improve their product, but they really really want it to.
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Studies show it’s not useful for that either.
It does have applications in doing and excusing warcrimes, and panopticon bullshit.
Personally I don’t want AI anywhere.
I can think of some uses
But I’m feeling really sadistic today, and it mostly just boils down to ‘forced ‘paranoia’ larp’.
I think Mozilla’s base is privacy focused individuals, a lot of them appreciating firefox’s opensource nature and the privacy hardened firefox forks. From a PR perspective, Firefox will gain users by adamantly going against AI tech.
Maybe their thought process is they’ll gain more users by adopting AI while knowing they’re still the most privacy focused of the major browsers. Where have I seen this mentality before?
Spoiler
The American Democrat party often believes it can get more votes by shifting conservative, believing the more progressive voters will stick pick them because they’re still more progressive than not.
Yeah but you can not vote, can you really not use a browser ? At the end of the day all the browsers are either chrome or Firefox forks
It’s interesting that so many of those privacy-focused individuals use Windows and don’t have a single extension installed though.
The post stresses the feature will be opt-in and that the user “is in control.”
Nothingburger
I’ve actually flipped on this position - but before you pull out your pitchforks and torches, please listen to what I have to say.
Do we want mass surveillance through SaaS? No. Do we want mass breach of copyright just because it’s a small holder and not some giant publisher - I.e “rules for thee” type vibe? Hell no. But do we throw the baby out with the bath water? Also: heck no. But let’s me underline a few facts.
- AI currently requires power greedy chips that also don’t utelize memory effectively enough
- Because of this it’s relegated to massive, globe heating infrastructure
- SaaS will always, always track you and harvest your data
- Said data will be used in marketing and psy-ops to manipulate you, your children and your community
- The more they track, the better their models become, which they’ll keep under lock and key
- More and more devices are coming with NPUs and TPUs on-chip
- That is the hardware has not caught up to the software yet
See where I’m going with this?
Add to the fact that people like their chatbots and can even learn to use them responsibly, but as long as they’re feeding the corpos, it’ll be used against them. Not only that, but in true silicon valley fashion, it’ll be monopolized.
The libre movement exists to bring power back to the user by fighting these conditions. It’s also a very good idea to standardize things so that it’s not hidden behind a proprietary API or service.
That’s why if Mozilla seeks to standardize locally run AI models by way of the browser, then that’s a good thing! Again; not if they’re feeding some SaaS.
But it their goal and their implementation is to bring models to the general consumer so that they can seize the means of computing, then that’s a good thing!
Again, if you’d rather just kick up dust and bemoan the idiocy and narcissistic nature of Silicon Valley, then you’ve already given them what they want - that they, and they alone, get to be the sole proprietaries of AI that is standardized. That’s like giving the average user over to a historically predatory ilk who’d rather build an autocracy than actually innovate.
Mozilla can be the hero we need. They can actually focus on consumer hardware, to give people what they want WITHOUT mass tracking and data harvesting.
That is if they want to. I’m not saying they’re not going to bend over, but they need the right kind of push back. They need to be told “local AI only - no SaaS” and then they can focus on creating web standards for local AI, effectively becoming the David to Silicon Valleys Goliath.
I know this is an unpopular opinion and I know the Silicon Valley barons are a bunch of sociopaths with way too much money, but we can’t give them monopoly over this. That would be bad!! We need to give the power to the user, and that means standardization!
Take it from an old curmudgeon. I’ve shook my fist at the cloud, I’ve read a ton of EULAs and I’ve opposed many predatory practices. But we need to understand that the user wants what the user wants. We can’t stick our heads in the sand and just repeat “AI bad” ad nauseum. We need to mobilize against the central giants.
We need a local AI movement and Mozilla could be in the forefront of this, if it weren’t for the pushback and outright cynicism people trevall generally (and justifiably) have - but we can’t let these cretinous bastards hold all the AI cards.
We need libre AI, and we need it now!
Thank you for your consideration.
ai can be good as long as you don’t let it think for you. i think the problem is taking resources from development and building into a browser would could just be a bookmark to a webpage.
why don’t they just instead put vivaldi’s web panel sidebar into firefox so you can just add chatgpt or whatever as a web panel. i think that would be infinitely more useful (and can be used for other sites other than ai assistants).
ai can be good as long as you don’t let it think for you
Unfortunately, there’s too many people already doing that, with not so clever results!
If it increases accessibility for those with additional requirements then great but we know that’s not even in its top 10 reasons for being implemented
I am not really liking AI , sure its good for somethings but in last 2 weeks i seen some very negative and destructive outcomes from AI . I am so tired of everything being AI . It can have good potential but what are risks to users experience?
What things is it good for?
Genuinely good for?
Edit: being downvoted, but nobody has an answer, do they?
Basically everything its used for that isn’t being shoved in your face 24/7.
- speech to text
- image recognition
- image to text (includes OCR)
- language translation
- text to speech
- protein folding
- lots of other bio/chem problems
Lots of these existed before the AI hype to the point they’re taken for granted, but they are as much AI an LLM or image generator. All the consumer level AI services range from annoying to dangerous.
Is it actually both good and efficient for that crap, though? Or is it just capable of doing it?
Is it efficient at simulating protein folding, or does it constantly hallucinate impossible bullshit that has to be filtered out, burning a mountain and a lake for what a super computer circa 2010 would have just crunched through?
Does the speech to text actually work efficiently? On a variety of accents and voices? Compared to the same resources without the bullshit machine?
I feel like i need to ask all these questions because there are so many cultists out there contriving places to put this shit. I’m not opposed to a huge chunky ‘nuclear option’ for computing existing, I just think we need to actually think before we burn the kinds of resources this shit takes on something my phone could have done in 2017.
All of the AI uses I’ve listed have been around for almost a decade or more and are the only computational solutions to those problems. If you’ve ever used speech to text that wasn’t a speak-n-spell you were using a very basic AI model. If you ever scanned a document and had the text be recognized, that’s an AI model.
The catch here is I’m not talking about chatgpt or anything trying be very “general”. These are all highly specialized ai models that serve a very specific function.
a decade or more
Okay so not this trash that everyone’s going all-in on right now and building extra coal plants to power.
Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, but how can you be aware of this fact
I don’t know whether the negative reactions reflect the majority of Firefox users or are just a noisy minority. Mozilla, after all, likely has a clearer view of the whole user base.
and then still assume that nobody wants something based on a non-representative sample of 52 comments?
That bit was odd for me too. I think the author means “nobody” based on the online reactions and discussions about Firefox. And you shouldn’t take the term/word too literal. So I can understand the view at least, because that is what I am getting too. The problem is, that mostly negative opinions are discussed. And mostly from tech people, which I personally assume most Firefox users might be.
I considered using AI to summarize news articles that don’t seem worth the time to read in full (the attention industrial complex is really complicating my existence). But I turned it off and couldn’t find the button to turn it back on.
If you need to summarize the news, which is already a summary of an event containing the important points and nothing else, then AI is the wrong tool. A better journalist is what you actually need. The whole point of good journalism is that it already did that work for you.
That should be the point but there is barely good journalism left.
How does AI mis-summarizing the (allegedly bad) journalism improve it?
It SLAMS away all the fluff.
I have a real journalist, but this is more on the “did you know this was important” side. Like how it’s fine to rinse your mouth out after brushing your teeth, but if your water isn’t fluoridated then you probably shouldn’t (which I got from skimming the article for the actionable information).
you have to be REALLY careful when asking an LLM to summarize news otherwise it will hallucinate what it believes sounds logical and correct. you have to point it directly to the article, ensure that it reads it, and then summarize. and honestly at that point…you might as well read it yourself.
And this goes beyond just summarizing articles you NEED to provide an LLM a source for just about everything now. Even if you tell it to research online the solution to a problem many times now it’ll search for non-relevant links and utilize that for its solution because, again, to the LLM it makes the most sense when in reality it has nothing to do with your problem.
At this point it’s an absolute waste of time using any LLM because within the last few months all models have noticeably gotten worse. Claude.ai is an absolute waste of time as 8 times out of 10 all solutions are hallucinations and recently GPT5 has started “fluffing” solutions with non-relevant information or it info dumps things that have nothing to do with your original prompt.
I wish it was a clear pption in my browser.
I certainly want it. The current anti-AI wave is irrational.
That isn’t to say that AI is not a major potential existential problem when it goes to AGI and to ASI, or that AI in the hands of private Oligarch psychos are not a catastrophe, but the current hatred is of a different kind, are off the charts, actually evil, and have no relation to the tool it self, or the potential existential risks. The group have already been consumed by hatred and unfortunately, they are now also attacking ordinary Lemmy users that ‘admit’ that they use AI, or ‘admit’ that they treat it as a ‘friend’. You have all seen this. People just mentioning AI are downvoted and hated upon, people that use AI always get a “AI slop !” remark with them on their way. A large percentage, like this post, are subtly attacking that others even have a choice of utilizing AI in their daily life - because they hate it. This is kinder-garden level bullying !
Most of the daily worries of AI, stems from the societal system we are in. Job loss (It’s build into the current system!), ‘AI’-slop (as if Capitalism didn’t create slop?), ‘Copyright’ idiocy that are only necessary in a combative type of society, AI+biz out-competing ordinary people, becoming poor, homeless etc, big monetary/political powers consolidating more power by misusing AI, an incredible amount of propaganda/marketing and manipulation and so on. The old system is incompatible with AI, so people are seeing things go in a wrong way, and feeling the cracks and dissonance between an old failing system, and the new possibilities we have. We - humanity - are in a transitional phase, where the old systems we follow, are no longer adequate, and will implode/convulse in to a new stable system. But the old system is stubbornly trying to keep going, while not having any answers, or any will, to adapt or even discuss the internal dissonance that are accelerating. THAT is the problem! Almost all current ‘AI’ problems that result in this hate backlash - comes directly from the failing type of society we have - not the tool/technology it self ! People should focus on the root-problem, not the tool it-self, and certainly not other users that need it.
This whole group of angry people need to chill tf out and admit to them selves that they are mis-directing their hatred (valid or not), and that their hate are currently harming other ordinary people - not much different from them selves. Stop bullying others just because you can’t handle the inherent failings of the old crap system, a system build on pure combative ideology, “by the oligarchs, for the oligarchs”. Stop fighting for ‘Jobs’, and start fighting for a system where we don’t need ‘Jobs’, Stop fighting for ‘Copyright’, or any of the other insane protectionist ‘patches’ to the current bunkers society/ideology, and start fighting for a society where we don’t have to hoard ‘property’ to survive. Fight for a society that are compatible with where we are technologically/philosophically, one that are actually designed/intended to be compatible with peoples needs and their humble wishes for a safe and stimulating future.
Lastly, being worried/focused on an ASI takeover of humanity, or common people being (more) controlled by the Oligarchs/Big Corp, etc, is completely legit, and it absolutely needs to be talked about, but this group of haters is just hating ‘AI’ and people using it in general, for the wrong reasons, and then lashing out towards those people that enjoy/need it now. (Good for you if you don’t need it in this society).
This bullying has to stop. In the mean time, I and many others, are starting to use current AI to design/build systems that bring us all over this ideological molasses we are in, and land us on the other side as fast and safely as we can. You should probably do the same instead of being consumed by anger, but that is your choice to make. Thanks for reading.
All great evils have been perpetrates by ordinary people. Ita really not a mollification to say you’re just engaging in this hugely deatructive trend as an ordinary person.
I agree with you, for what it’s worth.
