TL;DR: Mozilla recently released AI controls for Firefox: a single control panel that lets people disable AI features in the browser or pick and choose which to leave on. On the surface, this sounds like a win for user choice in an era of AI-everything.
If we dig deeper, you can start to see that the kill switch isn’t the whole story. This feature acts like an accountability sink. By giving you an off-switch, Mozilla’s leadership shifts the ethical burden of AI onto the user - turning their design choices into your responsibility.
Any LLM features should’ve been opt-in by default if Mozilla actually gave a shit, asking the user if they wanted that useless bullshit before installing. As this technology isn’t polished and can introduce vulnerabilities due to it’s inherently insecure nature. A kill switch is useful if a user decided that LLMs weren’t it and wanted to disable everything wholesale at the click of a button; only after they originally consented to LLM features being enabled.
Mozilla are only adding this feature because users made their LLM by default installation look pretty grim, I was one of those many dissenting voices about that. They wanted to jump on the LLM hype and cash in on some techbro attention, not considering that some of their user base would outright reject the idea.