"It’s safe to say that the people who volunteered to “shape” the initiative want it dead and buried. Of the 52 responses at the time of writing, all rejected the idea and asked Mozilla to stop shoving AI features into Firefox."

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[–] 60 points 11 months ago (1 child)

Just render the page, page renderer.

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  • [–] 58 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

    You want AI in your browser? Just add as a "search engine" option, with a URL like

    https://chatgpt.com/?q=%25s
    

    , with a shortcut like @ai. You can then ask it anything right there in your search bar.

    Maybe also add one with a URL with some query pre-written like

    https://chatgpt.com/?q=summarize this page for me: %s
    

    as @ais or something, modern chatbots have the ability to make HTTP requests for you. Then if you want to summarize the page you're on, you do Ctrl+L Ctrl+C @ais Ctrl+V Enter. There, I solved all your AI needs with 4 shortcuts without literally any client-side code.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 child)

    You want AI in your browser?

    Well, think again.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago

    Emissions. Economic problems. Goading several people into suicide.

    Like, if you ship a food item with harmful bacteria in it, it gets recalled. If you have a fatal design flaw in a car, it gets recalled. If your LLM encourages people to separate from their loved ones and kill themselves, nothing fucking happens.

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  • [–] 28 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Why not just distribute a separate build and call it “Firefox AI Edition” or something? Making this available in the base binary is a big mistake. At least doing so immediately and without testing the waters.

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  • [–] 79 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    The more AI is being pushed into my face, the more it pisses me off.

    Mozilla could have made an extension and promote it on their extension store. Rather than adding cruft to their browser and turning it on by default.

    The list of things to turn off to get a pleasant experience in Firefox is getting longer by the day. Not as bad as chrome, but still.

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  • [–] 30 points 11 months ago

    Oh this triggers me. There have been multiple good suggestions for Firefox in the past that are closed with nofix as "this can be provided by the community as an add-on". Yet they shove the crappiest crap into the main browser now.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago

    Rather than adding cruft to their browser and turning it on by default.

    The second paragraph of the article:

    The post stresses the feature will be opt-in and that the user “is in control.”

    That being said, I agree with you that they should have made it an extension if they really wanted to make sure the user "is in control."

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    Switching to de-Mozilla'd Firefox (Waterfox) is as simple as copying your profile folder from FF to WF. Everything transfers over, and I mean everything. No mozilla corp, no opting out of shit in menus at all.

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  • [–] 42 points 11 months ago (13 children)

    Those unhappy have another option: use an AI‑free Firefox fork such as LibreWolf, Waterfox, or Zen Browser.

    And I have taken that other option.

    Also: Vanadium and/or Ironfox on Android.

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  • [–] 26 points 11 months ago (12 children)

    A fork is great, but the more a fork deviates, the more issues there are likely to be. Firefox is already at low enough numbers that it's not really sustainable.

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  • [–] 28 points 11 months ago (9 children)

    Then Mozilla should start listening to their users instead of driving them away. I know I stopped using Firefox after being a regular user since launch because the AI nonsense became the last sta straw.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    Then Mozilla should start listening to their users instead of driving them away.

    I think the hope is to get more people in than losing them. But with Ai nobody will stay forever, because the time someone else makes a better Ai tool, they switch. Because Mozilla loses personality and uniqueness and start getting replaceable. ... just like employees who are forced to use Ai instead their own work and knowledge.

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  • [–] -2 points 11 months ago (7 children)

    Yes but we shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good.

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  • [+] 12 points 11 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] -5 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    There aren't better alternatives, and the ai shit is all easy to disable.

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  • [+] 6 points 11 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    To my knowledge that literally only exists in the form of a Firefox fork like Librewolf. Which takes more effort to switch to than simply disabling a couple values in config.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago*

    LibreWolf is very privacy focused and hardened by default in ways that impact convenience. Waterfox on the other hand? I'd say switching to that is easier than turning off all the shit you'd have to turn off in a fresh FF install. You copy the profile folder into the spot where WF stores its profiles, and you're done. All your everything is intact. History, cache, bookmarks, cookies, extensions, login sessions, settings (though your opt-out settings for garbage like homepage sponsored links or AI don't do anything anymore because there's nothing to opt out of).

    I'd been using Firefox since it was Netscape Navigator. One toggle too many got me on Waterfox a few months ago. I have noticed absolutely no difference in my heavily customized browsing experience from the change, other than not having to go menu diving to turn off the new data harvesting anti-feature of the month.

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  • [+] 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    Well, the first two essentially are Firefox and the latter is very immature to the point that I doubt you could reliably use it. It's in beta.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    Yes, "essentially firefox but without mozilla corporation or data harvesting / ad partners" is exactly what you'd want to use instead of firefox. Waterfox in particular is so "essentially" firefox that it is firefox. Copy over your profile folder. Click the blue icon instead of the orange one. Congratulations, you are migrated and never have to worry about sponsors or ai in your browser again. Waterfox doesn't even have telemetry to opt out of.

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  • [–] 16 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    I think Mozilla's base is privacy focused individuals, a lot of them appreciating firefox's opensource nature and the privacy hardened firefox forks. From a PR perspective, Firefox will gain users by adamantly going against AI tech.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Maybe their thought process is they'll gain more users by adopting AI while knowing they're still the most privacy focused of the major browsers. Where have I seen this mentality before?

    SpoilerThe American Democrat party often believes it can get more votes by shifting conservative, believing the more progressive voters will stick pick them because they're still more progressive than not.

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  • [–] 12 points 11 months ago* (5 children)

    I am not really liking AI , sure its good for somethings but in last 2 weeks i seen some very negative and destructive outcomes from AI . I am so tired of everything being AI . It can have good potential but what are risks to users experience?

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

    What things is it good for?

    Genuinely good for?

    Edit: being downvoted, but nobody has an answer, do they?

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (3 children)

    Basically everything its used for that isn't being shoved in your face 24/7.

    • speech to text
    • image recognition
    • image to text (includes OCR)
    • language translation
    • text to speech
    • protein folding
      • lots of other bio/chem problems

    Lots of these existed before the AI hype to the point they're taken for granted, but they are as much AI an LLM or image generator. All the consumer level AI services range from annoying to dangerous.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (2 children)

    Is it actually both good and efficient for that crap, though? Or is it just capable of doing it?

    Is it efficient at simulating protein folding, or does it constantly hallucinate impossible bullshit that has to be filtered out, burning a mountain and a lake for what a super computer circa 2010 would have just crunched through?

    Does the speech to text actually work efficiently? On a variety of accents and voices? Compared to the same resources without the bullshit machine?

    I feel like i need to ask all these questions because there are so many cultists out there contriving places to put this shit. I'm not opposed to a huge chunky 'nuclear option' for computing existing, I just think we need to actually think before we burn the kinds of resources this shit takes on something my phone could have done in 2017.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    All of the AI uses I've listed have been around for almost a decade or more and are the only computational solutions to those problems. If you've ever used speech to text that wasn't a speak-n-spell you were using a very basic AI model. If you ever scanned a document and had the text be recognized, that's an AI model.

    The catch here is I'm not talking about chatgpt or anything trying be very "general". These are all highly specialized ai models that serve a very specific function.

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  • [–] 46 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (18 children)

    Hear me out.

    This could actually be cool:

    • If I could, say, mash in "get rid of the junk in this page" or "turn the page this color" or "navigate this form for me"

    • If it could block SEO and AI slop from search/pages, including images.

    • If I can pick my own API (including local) and sampling parameters

    • If it doesn't preload any model in RAM.

    ...That'd be neat.

    What I don't want is a chatbot or summarizer or deep researcher because there are 7000 bajillion of those, and there is literally no advantage to FF baking it in like every other service on the planet.


    And... Honestly, PCs are not ready for local LLMs. Not even the most exotic experimental quantization of Qwen3 30B is 'good enough' to be reliable for the average person, and it still takes too much CPU/RAM. And whatever Mozilla ships would be way worse.

    That could change with a good bitnet model, but no one with money has pursued it yet.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    That would be awesome. Like a greasemonkey/advanced unlock for those of us who don't know how to code. So many times I wanted to customise a website but I don't know how or it's not worth the effort.

    But only of it was local, and specially on mobile, where I need the most, it will be impossible for years...

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago* (2 children)

    I mean, you can run small models on mobile now, but they're mostly good as a cog in an automation pipeline, not at (say) interpreting english instructions on how to alter a webpage.

    ...Honestly, open weight model APIs for single-off calls like this are not a bad stopgap. It costs basically nothing, you can use any provider you want, its power efficient, and if you're on the web, you have internet.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    You mean to use online LLM?

    No. That's what I don't want. If it was a company I trusted I would, but good luck with that. Mozilla is not that company anymore, even if they had the resources to host their own.

    But locally or in a server I trust? That would be awesome. AI is awesome, but not the people who runs it.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago*

    I mean, there are literally hundreds of API providers. I'd probably pick Cerebras, but you can take your pick from any jurisdiction and any privacy policy.

    I guess you could rent an on-demand cloud instance yourself too, that spins down when you aren't using it.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Honestly, PCs are not ready for local LLMs

    The auto-translation LLM runs locally and works fine. Not quite as good as deepl but perfectly competent. That's the one "AI" feature which is largely uncontroversial because it's actually useful, unobtrusive, and privacy-enhancing.

    Local LLMs (and related transformer-based models) can work, they just need a narrow focus. Unfortunately they're not getting much love because cloud chatbots can generate a lot of incoherent bullshit really quickly and that's a party trick that's got all the CEOs creaming their pants at the ungrounded fantasy of being just another trillion dollars away from AGI.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    Yeah that's really awesome.

    ...But it's also something the anti-AI crowd would hate once they realize it's an 'LLM" doing the translation, which is a large part of FF's userbase. The well has been poisoned by said CEOs.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    I don't think that's really fair. There are cranky contradictarians everywhere, but in my experience that feature has been well received even in the AI-skeptic tech circles that are well educated on the matter.

    Besides, the technical "concerns" are only the tip of the iceberg. The reality is that people complaining about AI often fall back to those concerns because they can't articulate how most AI fucking sucks to use. It's an eldtritch version of clippy. It's inhuman and creepy in an uncanny valley kind of way, half the time it doesn't even fucking work right and even if it does it's less efficient than having a competent person (usually me) do the work.

    Auto translation or live transcription tools are narrowly-focused tools that just work, don't get in the way, and don't try to get me to talk to them like they are a person. Who cares whether it's an LLM. What matters is that it's a completely different vibe. It's useful, out of my way when I don't need it, and isn't pretending to have a first name. That's what I want from my computer. And I haven't seen significant backlash to that sentiment even in very left-wing tech circles.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (6 children)

    You know what would be really cool? If I could just ask AI to turn off the AI in my browser. Now that would be cool.

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  • [+] -6 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    I can't fucking believe I'm agreeing with a .world chud.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    Well fortunately for you, I don't know what that means.

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  • [–] -2 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Your server has not a monopoly on, but a majority of the worst shitlibs and other chuds. To the point I'm genuinely surprised by agreeing with someone there, and am worried that when i examine it closely youll be agreeing with me for some unthinkably horrible reason.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

    The problem is I fundamentally do not understand how Lemmy works, so I just picked what seemed obvious. Like why wouldn't I want the world.

    Also I thought from just reading sub-Lemmies? that .ml was the crap hole.

    Also, I looked up Chud and that's really mean.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    I would say that while there are general rules of thumb, it's generally good to never assume the intentions or beliefs of another user based solely on their home server. There are nice people all over, and there are also a lot of assholes all over.

    By the way, as to your question mark, they are just called "Communities" on Lemmy typically, though I think some instances call them something different occasionally.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago* (3 children)

    If I can pick my own API (including local) and sampling parameters

    You can do this now:

    • selfhost ollama.
    • selfhost open-webui and point it to ollama
    • enable local models in about:config
    • select "local" instead of ChatGPT or w/e.

    Hardest part is hosting open-webui because AFAIK it only ships as a docker image.

    Edit: s/openai/open-webui

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (2 children)

    Open WebUI isn't very 'open' and kinda problematic last I saw. Same with ollama; you should absolutely avoid either.

    ...And actually, why is open web ui even needed? For an embeddings model or something? All the browser should need is an openai compatible endpoint.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    The firefox AI sidebar embeds an external open-webui. It doesn't roll its own ui for chat. Everything with AI is done in the quickest laziest way.

    What exactly isn't very open about open-webui or ollama? Are there some binary blobs or weird copyright licensing? What alternatives are you suggesting?

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago*

    https://old.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/1kfhkal/open_webui_is_no_longer_open_source/

    https://old.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1mncrqp/ollama/

    Basically, they're both using their popularity to push proprietary bits, which their devleopment is shifting to. They're enshittifying.

    In addition, ollama is just a demanding leech on llama.cpp that contributes nothing back, while hiding the connection to the underlying library at every opportunity. They do scummy things like.

    • Rename models for SEO, like "Deepseek R1" which is really the 7b distill.

    • It has really bad default settings (like a 2K default context limit, and default imatrix free quants) which give local LLM runners bad impressions of the whole ecosystem.

    • They mess with chat templates, and on top of that, create other bugs that don't exist in base llama.cpp

    • Sometimes, they lag behind GGUF support.

    • And other times, they make thier own sloppy implementations for 'day 1' support of trending models. They often work poorly; the support's just there for SEO. But this also leads to some public GGUFs not working with the underlying llama.cpp library, or working inexplicably bad, polluting the issue tracker of llama.cpp.

    I could go on and on with examples of their drama, but needless to say most everyone in localllama hates them. The base llama.cpp maintainers hate them, and they're nice devs.

    You should use llama.cpp llama-server as an API endpoint. Or, alternatively the ik_llama.cpp fork, kobold.cpp, or croco.cpp. Or TabbyAPI as an 'alternate' GPU focused quantized runtime. Or SGLang if you just batch small models. Llamacpp-python, LMStudo; literally anything but ollama.

    As for the UI, thats a muddier answer and totally depends what you use LLMs for. I use mikupad for its 'raw' notebook mode and logit displays, but there are many options. Llama.cpp has a pretty nice built in one now.

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  • [–] 21 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Personally I don't want AI anywhere.

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  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    So, will there be an option to disable it?

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  • [–] 24 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I think ive lost hope at this point to see AI being actually useful in any application except chat gpt and code editors.

    Companies are struggling how to use Ai in their products because it actually doesnt improve their product, but they really really want it to.

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  • [–] [M] 58 points 11 months ago* (2 children)

    Hey all, just a reminder to keep the community rules in mind when commenting on this thread. Criticism in any direction is fine, but please maintain your civility and don't stoop to ad-hominem etc. Thanks.

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  • [+] -1 points 11 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 24 points 11 months ago

    If it can be proven that an LLM bot account is present on the instance masquerading as a human user, I would recommend you report the account for that reason/spam so that it can be investigated and removed per instance rule 4 after evidence is found.

    Since they aren't people, I'd say it's pointless to reply to them with ad-hominem in the first place since it means nothing to them, and therefore reporting it would be the more effective action to take in any event.

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    [–] 10 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    When I want AI, I use this: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=DuckDuckGo+AI+Chat&ia=chat&duckai=1

    My worry about AI built into my browser is that it'll be turned into data mining, training, and revenue generation resulting in exploitation and manipulation of me.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    My worry about AI built into my browser is that it’ll be turned into data mining, training, and revenue generation

    Isn't the AI Mozilla is talking about all run locally?

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    I'll be honest, I do not know, but I'm always more worried about where it'll end-up over where it is right now. Even if it is all local for now, it is a small tweak for that to change. Just a small decision by a few people and everything changes. I don't have enough trust to believe that decision won't be made.

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  • [–] 10 points 11 months ago

    Doesn't matter what the end-user wants. Corporate greed feeding into technological ignorance is gonna shove it down our throats anyway

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago

    Well if they do I'll just switch to whatever browser that doesn't.

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  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago

    The post stresses the feature will be opt-in and that the user “is in control.”

    Nothingburger

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  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    It depends. If it's just for the sake of plugging AI because it's cool and trendy, fuck no.

    If it's to improve privacy, accessibility and minimize our dependency on big tech, then I think it's a good idea.

    A good example of AI in Firefox is the Translate feature (Project Bergamot). It works entirely locally, but relies on trained models to provide translation on-demand, without having Google, etc as the middle-man, and Mozilla has no idea what you translates, just which language model(s) you downloaded.

    Another example is local alt-text generation for images, which also requires a trained model. Again, works entirely locally, and provide some accessibility to users with a vision impairment when an image doesn't provide caption.

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    [–] 4 points 11 months ago

    They're really trying to shove this down our throats aren't they?

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Those unhappy have another option: use an AI‑free Firefox fork such as LibreWolf, Waterfox, or Zen Browser.

    Any idea as to when LibreWolf will be coming out with a mobile browser?

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago

    I noticed that too! I will never use it.

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Cannot wait for Servo & LadyBird to take off

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

    ai can be good as long as you don't let it think for you. i think the problem is taking resources from development and building into a browser would could just be a bookmark to a webpage.

    why don't they just instead put vivaldi's web panel sidebar into firefox so you can just add chatgpt or whatever as a web panel. i think that would be infinitely more useful (and can be used for other sites other than ai assistants).

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Everyone's entitled to their opinion, but how can you be aware of this fact

    I don’t know whether the negative reactions reflect the majority of Firefox users or are just a noisy minority. Mozilla, after all, likely has a clearer view of the whole user base.

    and then still assume that nobody wants something based on a non-representative sample of 52 comments?

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    That bit was odd for me too. I think the author means "nobody" based on the online reactions and discussions about Firefox. And you shouldn't take the term/word too literal. So I can understand the view at least, because that is what I am getting too. The problem is, that mostly negative opinions are discussed. And mostly from tech people, which I personally assume most Firefox users might be.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    B- but- ✨yaiy window!!1!✨!1!!

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    I am actually curious if gentoo community sees a noticeable increase in time for updating/installing with all these new AI features on everything.

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  • [+] 5 points 11 months ago (7 children)
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  • [–] 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    That should be the point but there is barely good journalism left.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    you have to be REALLY careful when asking an LLM to summarize news otherwise it will hallucinate what it believes sounds logical and correct. you have to point it directly to the article, ensure that it reads it, and then summarize. and honestly at that point...you might as well read it yourself.

    And this goes beyond just summarizing articles you NEED to provide an LLM a source for just about everything now. Even if you tell it to research online the solution to a problem many times now it'll search for non-relevant links and utilize that for its solution because, again, to the LLM it makes the most sense when in reality it has nothing to do with your problem.

    At this point it's an absolute waste of time using any LLM because within the last few months all models have noticeably gotten worse. Claude.ai is an absolute waste of time as 8 times out of 10 all solutions are hallucinations and recently GPT5 has started "fluffing" solutions with non-relevant information or it info dumps things that have nothing to do with your original prompt.

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  • [–] 7 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    I've actually flipped on this position - but before you pull out your pitchforks and torches, please listen to what I have to say.

    Do we want mass surveillance through SaaS? No. Do we want mass breach of copyright just because it's a small holder and not some giant publisher - I.e "rules for thee" type vibe? Hell no. But do we throw the baby out with the bath water? Also: heck no. But let's me underline a few facts.

    1. AI currently requires power greedy chips that also don't utelize memory effectively enough
    2. Because of this it's relegated to massive, globe heating infrastructure
    3. SaaS will always, always track you and harvest your data
    4. Said data will be used in marketing and psy-ops to manipulate you, your children and your community
    5. The more they track, the better their models become, which they'll keep under lock and key
    6. More and more devices are coming with NPUs and TPUs on-chip
    7. That is the hardware has not caught up to the software yet

    See where I'm going with this?

    Add to the fact that people like their chatbots and can even learn to use them responsibly, but as long as they're feeding the corpos, it'll be used against them. Not only that, but in true silicon valley fashion, it'll be monopolized.

    The libre movement exists to bring power back to the user by fighting these conditions. It's also a very good idea to standardize things so that it's not hidden behind a proprietary API or service.

    That's why if Mozilla seeks to standardize locally run AI models by way of the browser, then that's a good thing! Again; not if they're feeding some SaaS.

    But it their goal and their implementation is to bring models to the general consumer so that they can seize the means of computing, then that's a good thing!

    Again, if you'd rather just kick up dust and bemoan the idiocy and narcissistic nature of Silicon Valley, then you've already given them what they want - that they, and they alone, get to be the sole proprietaries of AI that is standardized. That's like giving the average user over to a historically predatory ilk who'd rather build an autocracy than actually innovate.

    Mozilla can be the hero we need. They can actually focus on consumer hardware, to give people what they want WITHOUT mass tracking and data harvesting.

    That is if they want to. I'm not saying they're not going to bend over, but they need the right kind of push back. They need to be told "local AI only - no SaaS" and then they can focus on creating web standards for local AI, effectively becoming the David to Silicon Valleys Goliath.

    I know this is an unpopular opinion and I know the Silicon Valley barons are a bunch of sociopaths with way too much money, but we can't give them monopoly over this. That would be bad!! We need to give the power to the user, and that means standardization!

    Take it from an old curmudgeon. I've shook my fist at the cloud, I've read a ton of EULAs and I've opposed many predatory practices. But we need to understand that the user wants what the user wants. We can't stick our heads in the sand and just repeat "AI bad" ad nauseum. We need to mobilize against the central giants.

    We need a local AI movement and Mozilla could be in the forefront of this, if it weren't for the pushback and outright cynicism people trevall generally (and justifiably) have - but we can't let these cretinous bastards hold all the AI cards.

    We need libre AI, and we need it now!

    Thank you for your consideration.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    I agree that: SaaS = UaaP (User as a Product). Most importantly, AI is powerful and here to stay and if it's completely controlled by the rich and powerful, then the rest of us are majorly screwed.

    Small models, local models, models that anybody can deploy and control the way they see fit, PUBLIC models not controlled by the rich and powerful - these will be crucial if we're going to avoid the worst case situation.

    IMHO it's better to start downloading and playing with local quantized LLMs (i barely know what i'm talking about here, i admit, but bear with me - i'm just trying to add something useful to the discussion), it's better to start taking hold of the tech and tinkering, like we did with cars when they were new, and planes, and computers, and internet ... so that hopefully there will be alternatives to the privately controlled rich-and-powerful-corpo models.

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