The main use for AI that I've seen in my circles is a search engine replacement. Not because AI is a good search engine, but because search engines have largely become useless.

If Mozilla wants to cement their place, create a better search engine. It's how Google came to control a huge portion of the internet, and there's now a huge vacuum waiting for someone to replace what we lost.

I feel stupid for asking but what is an AI agentic browser even supposed to do? Search things based on your query? Well search bars have been a thing since forever. 🤷

very few who even touch AI for anything aside from docs or stats

Not even translation? That’s probably the biggest browser AI feature.

I think this is just panic from the higher ups at Mozilla who have no idea what in the fuck the company should be doing

It's not panic, it's consequence of networking and a very specific culture having formed for CEOs and such.

A bit like Silicon Valley tech bros, they think they are the chosen ones leading the charge and able to make decisions for all of us, sort of aristocracy.

So in their circles it's fashion now to play this "AI" thing.

And mechanisms to remove those fools from places they don't belong to and make them clean streets have rotten.

Usable and decentralized - well, you'll need some beyond-the-horizon planning for how the development of that will go on. Because 90s Web was kinda normal too, except there were future stages.

You need something that's usable almost from the beginning, but that is also usable for everything you haven't yet thought about. Something that allows any use, but doesn't limit any, even needed only by a handful of people, task.

You need universal open infrastructure. Something allowing to pool public service trackers, storage services, relay services, notification services, key services, search services, but tying them into specific applications on the client. Different applications, over the common high-level medium (of authors and messages and groups, for example ; perhaps subscriptions). And you need that to be untrusted and backed up by DHT and sneakernet as perfectly functional alternative ways for the same system. You need them all.

And you need means of development with higher common, basic level. You need something like Hypercard on the clients, so that development in this "alternative Web" were accessible in its full power. With "cards" shared like messages. That'd be similar to how we fetch different websites.

Messages and people and groups would have global identifiers, tied to cryptography. One could have sort of "permission rule" messages to be interpreted by clients to decide, during "replaying" a group with its messages, which action was valid and which wasn't, and what can this specific user do to the group at this specific moment.

There could be different types of messages, perhaps with references to "interpreter" messages containing scripts.

OK. That's just a pet dream of mine, but I don't yet have a full picture in my mind.

I think this is just panic from the higher ups at Mozilla who have no idea what in the fuck the company should be doing or is about, even.

As someone who started their career as a volunteer at Mozilla and was fortunate enough to become an employee (although am no longer), I can say with a fair amount of confidence that this has been their standard operating mode for over a decade. Nothing I’ve seen from them since I was let go has shown me they’re operating any differently.

I still support Firefox because I oppose a browser monoculture owned by Google, and the advocacy work the Foundation is vitally important. The Corporation lost the plot ages ago though, and does more harm to Mozilla’s mission than any other player out there. No amount of re-orgs or pivots can fix this.

I hope, someday, for Firefox to be freed from the Corporation as a sustainable community run project (like Debian), with infrastructure sponsored by the Foundation and others who want to see it continue. Unfortunately the Corporation will never let Firefox go because its existential for them, and will be stuck in this panic cycle for as long as Google keeps them on life support.

Anyway, still using Firefox and pruning all the weeds from it each release, but it’s become exhausting.

What about all those ladder climbers who want to sound like they're tapped in to the pulse of cutting edge technology to the bosses? I work with engineers and it seems to be pretty split between full adoption and full rejection.

I think this is just panic from the higher ups at Mozilla who have no idea what in the fuck the company should be doing or is about, even.

There’s another possibility I don’t see anyone talking about. It could just be the higher ups at Mozilla doing the old performative “we’re doing AI” dance for their shareholders and the investment community. Everyone assumes they are 100% sincere about embracing AI but this could simply be them paying the AI tax that all companies seem required to pay right now.

If this is plausible, then we should just wait for it to manifest as actual feature changes and then judge. Right now this is just high level messaging and PR.

Small LLMs could be useful in-browser for automating actions - e.g. reject all cookie/tracking popups. Consent-o-matic only works for half the sites I encounter and doesn't support mobile

Security however is another rabbit hole

Am engineer. I use AI features in browsers, and know several others who also do. I'm looking forward to trying additional features Mozilla's going to be bringing in the future.

Basing your view of what everyone does on what everyone you know does is a perfect way to amplify the effects of a social bubble.