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.
LLM features should be opt-in by default, full stop. Just turning it off without being given a choice to refuse is very scummy behavior on the part of Mozilla. What if they wanted to use the default Firefox? Shouldn’t a user be allowed to opt-in and have LLM features off by default on every fresh install?
It’s nice having options that respect your freedom of choice and don’t force their deluded ideas upon you…I feel that mainline Firefox, made by Mozilla should do that as well! By not holding Mozilla to higher standards, you get another Microsoft Edge or Chrome situation all over again, this time in open source spaces.
Look at my post history, I am as violently anti abominable Intelligence as it gets, but as much as I would have liked for Mozilla to either stay completely away from that curse or maybe make it available as an plugin… I am fine with the way they handled it.
If you absolutely don’t want anything of that crap in your browser feel free to use and recommend a fork, or Vivaldi, or NetSurf or Dillo.
Like I said, then use a fork.
Tor and Mullvad made some excellent browsers.
Still not the point, if Mozilla wanted to implement LLM features, they needed to do it right! Opt-in is the ethical and user respecting way to handle it. We can all use Forks, but if you let a corporation get away with insane defaults…It will get worse.
Feel free to make the pull request, dawg