I honestly don't know how people can be so judgmental about a technology. AI is just a tool that can be sometimes be very helpful if you trust the users' critical thinking skills and the ability to smell bullshit. Most of the problems associated with AI are just a consequence of shitty business models and a mediocre mode of production (Capitalism) "Judging by what I see in the comments on the posts about Firefox’s potential AI feature integrations, the apparent path that critics are recommending as an alternative browser is “I’ll yell at you until you stop using ChatGPT”. Consider this post my official notice: that strategy hasn’t worked. And it is not going to work. The only thing that will work is to offer a better alternative to these users. That will involve defining what an acceptably “good” alternative AI looks like, and then building and shipping it to these users, and convincing them to use it. I’m hoping such an effort succeeds. But I can guarantee that scolding people and trying to convince them that they’re not finding utility in the current platforms, or trying to make them feel guilty about the fact that they are finding utility in the current platforms, will not work.And none of this is exculpatory for my friends at Mozilla. As I’ve said to the good people there, and will share again here, I don’t think the framing of the way this feature has been presented has done either the Firefox team or the community any favors. These big, emotional blow-ups are demoralizing, and take away time and energy and attention that could be better spent getting people excited and motivated to grow for the future."anildash.com/2025/11/14/wantin#AI #GenerativeAI #Mozilla #Firefox #AIBrowser #OpenAI #ChatGPT
My own question is: Why make another chatbot and summary service? There's already a plethora of them. Why not instead use those resources to make the browser better? I bet there's way more to do than the occasional shortcomings I see, maybe get on par with their competition with WebGL, WebGPU, WebRTC... Why not truly innovate and develop something new? An interface for their awesome local (AI) translation service? And the rest of the missing languages? Or something with privacy? That's their big advantage over their main competitor...Instead they don't innovate and spend their resources on yet another chatbot nobody asked for. (Though realistically, maybe there is some demand for this as well. My point is just it's not innovative, Google is better at AI either way, so they're still second to Chrome and continue to lose market share.)
And with most people it's probably the general sentiment towards AI. Bad for the planet as we ramp up dirty fossil fuels, it's exploitative, shoehorned into everything, and Mozilla didn't re-invent any of that.