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Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent. At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane. (www.thatprivacyguy.com)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/browsers@programming.dev
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Cross-Posted, via Technology Community.

Google Chrome is downloading a 4 GB Gemini Nano model onto users' machines without consent, with no opt-in, no opt-out short of enterprise tooling, and an automatic re-download every time the user deletes it. The pattern is identical to the Anthropic Claude Desktop case I wrote about last month, but the scale is between two and three orders of magnitude larger. This article does the legal analysis and, for the first time, the environmental analysis. The numbers are not small.

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[–] 3 points 6 months ago

Their energy estimates are way off. 240wh/4gb download is too high by 100x.

It's not clear that there is a privacy argument. That address bar content is sent to google was always the case.

There is a bloatware argument especially if the only added functionality is form-fill which was done fairly satisfactorily without the 4gb download.

OTOH, gemini nano is now effectively open weight model if it, and it is likely a hack will permit user access to the bloat tax.

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