Say NO to AI in the #Firefox browser - have your say here;
People hate the term AI and so Mozilla were always going to struggle with providing modern functionality, as let’s face it, the Internet is embracing AI whether we like it or not
There’s AI in many forms in Firefox such as how it predicts the page you want to revisit from the address bar and translates content locally on device. If these AI capabilities were moved to extensions, it would probably significantly reduce the benefit users get from Firefox and likely prevent other useful features such as privacy preserving AI alternatives.
This is poignant. AI as we know it is basically what we were calling machine learning a couple years ago. The same people that are very vocally complaining about the advent of a smarter browser, are the same people that bemoan Mozilla for depending on Google for financing. Somehow they want a browser that only the most devout privacy evangelists would use and they want a browser that is self-sustained through diverse deals, none of which they’re able to see or feel.
I feel like there’s a lot of disingenuous Firefox supporters who want a utopia browser and refuse to allow Mozilla to do anything to evolve the browser. These same people talk up all the Firefox forks and that change a few defaults and yet bemoan everything Mozilla does that makes those forks possible. It’s boring.
- I want a browser with on device translations.
- I want a browser with smart page suggestions.
- I want a browser that’s able to summarise articles.
- I want a browser that can fact-check pages.
@sabreW4K3 why don’t you fork Firefox to do all those unnecessary for everyone else things? Firefox needs to stay unbloated, unAI’d, and most importantly sincere to it’s original intents.
“I want a browser that can fact-check pages” 🤣 AI cannot fact check itself let alone anything else. Why don’t you do your own fact checking?
My £0.02
cannot fact check itself let alone anything else. Why don’t you do your own fact checking?
Why don’t I render my own CSS? Firefox has the ability to pull alternative sources in the background and compare against my current page. What is wrong with that?
It’s… Challenging. Like the pet eating thing, there are many sources saying it’s true and many saying it’s false. Official sources can lie (Russia came to mind for no reason whatsoever), so we rely on sources we already trust, which is tricky and even subjective.
I imagine that “if in Fox then False” is a good start, but aside from that I can only think it getting extra sources, also a challenge without real time web crawling of the internet, were google and Microsoft are already light years ahead.
the Internet is embracing AI whether we like it or not
And if not, the feature gets removed again in a year or so. So far it doesn’t really seem like it’s in your face or anything, so 🤷
Plus you can just turn it off or not use it. This is just a convenience of access to existing things, nothing newly built or added or so. All the loud whiners in that connect thread just once again show to Mozilla that they are better off never asking for feedback, since people are utterly unable to provide any in a way that is well-adjusted or more adult than a 6y old. >.>
But the problem is, people think that there’s one single development team working on Firefox and if they’re working on AI, they’re not improving or working on anything else.
- I want a browser that can fact-check web pages
- I want a browser that can keep track of my cryptocurrency investments
- I want a browser that can monitor the market for Beanie Babies
- I want a browser with a built-in Pokemon Go panel
- I want a browser that can detect when I’m about to post cringe
- I want a browser with tail fins and shag carpeting
Come on Mozilla, make it happen! As an added bonus, all that added UI cruft will probably mean new places to show advertising at the users.
Why would I say no to them providing a sidebar option for that?
Tons of people love to engage with LLMs, would be utterly assinine of Mozilla to not do something this benign to make it easier to use stuff?
They can make it into an extension then.
Like Container tabs, which, of all things, should be baked into the browser.
They can, but why? If I can be enabled/disabled, what’s the harm? If I thought Firefox is nefarious it wouldn’t use it at all, not just avoid their extensions. It’s not like that’s the only way they could have to spy of it was the goal.
This will be aimed for the average Joe that thinks it’s “neat” edge has it and doesn’t know about extensions.
Mullvad and Librewolf might have it disabled, it’s an easy switch.
The harm is that it contributes to software bloat. I haven’t met an “average user” that desperately wants AI in any product, at least the type of AI that these companies keep trying to shove down our throats.
The harm is that AI is still very new, with many of its use cases not panning out.
Well they’re adding more options for people, that’s exactly what people always want them to spend their time on. More options and user choices, default off, seems they’re doing it exactly what people always want them to do? 🤷
That doesn’t address the opportunity cost. Spending time on this means not spending time on something else. There are other optional things and user choices they could work on instead. This is always the case when doing anything, but AI is very far down the list of things I think are worth paying the costs for.
Why would I say no? If it can be turned off I don’t care. Mozilla might get some money from the idiotic AI frenzy which will help keep them going.
Of course if its implemented badly to affect privacy and security then no. But forks of Firefox like Fennac and Librewolf will strip this stuff out. I’m no fan of this AI nonsense but I haven’t seen anything yet to suggest this is anything more than a gimmick.
The biggest issue with Mozilla if they didn’t decide to put some form of AI stuff in Firefox is that their competitors could use it as ammunition to fuel an as campaign painting Firefox as not only out of touch and outdated, but less secure because they don’t have AI security.
I can guarantee if average person, like my middle aged parents who aren’t very tech savvy, saw an ad pointing that out (no matter how untrue it is) I’d be told about it the next chance they got, proving they believe it.
They have to keep up with what their competitors are doing or get left behind and die a slow and painful death. AI is just the latest trend to be added, and Mozilla is just trying to keep up to ensure whatever remainder of normies still use Firefox don’t decide to abandon ship.
I personally don’t like it, but what other options are there?
Wise words ! The best option would be to add AI by default but let’s people to totally disable it either via about:config or an uncheck box in the options.
Let’s be real, only tech savy people mess around with about:config nobs so this wouldn’t bother casual users an give others the possibility to disable it.
I don’t get why y’all are so mad about this. As long as the features are optional and I can easily turn them off in the settings, they don’t bother me at all.
Like people already said - they could be doing literally anything else. Have vacation time, fix any of the bugs, improve performance, anything at all. This is like adding a tattoo of shit to your chest. Sure, it’s your chest, but it’s also shit
On the other hand, Mozilla has ~750 employees all of whom are working on different projects at different times.
Their AI work is likely not preventing their development of other projects. Especially considering they are hiring for positions related to AI, I would imagine that current employee’s aren’t just filling in the gaps in the meantime, but are independent from each others departments.
