I don’t think anyone actually read the announcement, just the headline. Here was the new CEOs actual first point.
“First: Every product we build must give people agency in how it works. Privacy, data use, and AI must be clear and understandable. Controls must be simple. AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off. People should know why a feature works the way it does and what value they get from it.”
There was no easy way to turn it off without meddling with about:config. If they were serious and true to their word this would’ve been be the default from the start.
Plugins exist. There is no excuse for bloat8ng the browser with these seldom used niche features by default, espexially when they represent 5% if what the AI component is doing and the other 95% are harmful to literally every living thing on the planet.
There is only an environmental impact in AI in training in the places that have water issues or use fossil fuels on the grid. Otherwise its the same as any other power use.
Plus model training costs arent relevant to firefox. We dont factor in the power usage for creating the linux kernel when we talk about linux or any other software. There isnt any good reason we should care about 3rd party companies power generation costs. I dont think about how much power the steel plant used to build my car nor should I.
And what say you of the preliminary evidence suggesting that using AI is making people less capable of thinking for themselves, or people becoming emotionally attached to AI girlfriends/boyfriends, or people who killed themselves either intentionally or accidentally by following LLM advice, or the fact that an overwhelmibg majority of companies who made AI a crucial part of their functioning are losing money or going bankrupt? These are part of the social cost and they all point quite strongly towards it being a very bad idea to rely on AI for anything.
none of those features are slop. They are amazingly useful features. Removing them from the hands of average users by putting them behind an extension would make Firefox a much worse option and exclude a ton of people for no reason.
Your opinion is based on nothing and you have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re just a reactionary.
First, there should be a survey on what users actually want, no?
Because if no one wants AI and it’s “always a choice”, what you really do is waste considerable resources with as the only results, more settings users have to go through before starting using their browsers.
I like the convenience for languages I don’t speak, but when I checked it for Hungarian (that I do speak) the results are so much worse than Google Translate or DeepL, basically literal translation word-by-word, often completely losing the meaning and tone of the sentence.
It’d be nice if it integrated with my local ollama instance and let me pick which models I wanted to use on the fly with whatever part of the page I want.
I don’t think anyone actually read the announcement, just the headline. Here was the new CEOs actual first point.
“First: Every product we build must give people agency in how it works. Privacy, data use, and AI must be clear and understandable. Controls must be simple. AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off. People should know why a feature works the way it does and what value they get from it.”
It should read:
There was no easy way to turn it off without meddling with
about:config. If they were serious and true to their word this would’ve been be the default from the start.I despise AI. I don’t want it in my browser. If I want to use AI, I’ll go to Mistral or Claude.
So no text to voice/voice to text, no translation, no ocr, no summarization, no scam detection? These are useful ai features to have in a browser IMO.
Plugins exist. There is no excuse for bloat8ng the browser with these seldom used niche features by default, espexially when they represent 5% if what the AI component is doing and the other 95% are harmful to literally every living thing on the planet.
I dont consider any of those features to be bloat. “Harmful to every living thing on the planet” wtf are you referring to here?
The social and environmental impact of AI training and use is what I’m referring to.
There is only an environmental impact in AI in training in the places that have water issues or use fossil fuels on the grid. Otherwise its the same as any other power use.
Plus model training costs arent relevant to firefox. We dont factor in the power usage for creating the linux kernel when we talk about linux or any other software. There isnt any good reason we should care about 3rd party companies power generation costs. I dont think about how much power the steel plant used to build my car nor should I.
And what say you of the preliminary evidence suggesting that using AI is making people less capable of thinking for themselves, or people becoming emotionally attached to AI girlfriends/boyfriends, or people who killed themselves either intentionally or accidentally by following LLM advice, or the fact that an overwhelmibg majority of companies who made AI a crucial part of their functioning are losing money or going bankrupt? These are part of the social cost and they all point quite strongly towards it being a very bad idea to rely on AI for anything.
Pigs don’t consider slop to be slop.
none of those features are slop. They are amazingly useful features. Removing them from the hands of average users by putting them behind an extension would make Firefox a much worse option and exclude a ton of people for no reason.
Your opinion is based on nothing and you have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re just a reactionary.
You mean the same Claude from Anthropic? The same Anthropic working with Palantir?
And then you are here shitting on Mozilla…
You guys are a joke!
First, there should be a survey on what users actually want, no?
Because if no one wants AI and it’s “always a choice”, what you really do is waste considerable resources with as the only results, more settings users have to go through before starting using their browsers.
there is absolutely zero reason to put ai in firefox
Local ML translation was pretty cool
I like the convenience for languages I don’t speak, but when I checked it for Hungarian (that I do speak) the results are so much worse than Google Translate or DeepL, basically literal translation word-by-word, often completely losing the meaning and tone of the sentence.
exactly it should be a firefox extension, anyone can install if they want it.
It’d be nice if it integrated with my local ollama instance and let me pick which models I wanted to use on the fly with whatever part of the page I want.
By people he means other CEOs.