“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.”
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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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.
The more AI is being pushed into my face, thé 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.
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.
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.”
You want AI in your browser? Just add <your favourite spying ad machine> 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: %sas
@aisor 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.Personally I don’t want AI anywhere.
I can think of some uses
But I’m feeling really sadistic today, and it mostly just boils down to ‘forced ‘paranoia’ larp’.
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.
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?
Spoiler
The 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.
Yeah but you can not vote, can you really not use a browser ? At the end of the day all the browsers are either chrome or Firefox forks
It’s interesting that so many of those privacy-focused individuals use Windows and don’t have a single extension installed though.
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?
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.
I considered using AI to summarize news articles that don’t seem worth the time to read in full (the attention industrial complex is really complicating my existence). But I turned it off and couldn’t find the button to turn it back on.
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We see a lot of promise in AI browser features making your online experience smoother, more helpful, and free from the everyday disruptions that break your flow
I don’t really see AI and LLMs as a solution there. Things that disrupt are typically ads or other capitalist nonsense. What are they thinking and how will AI help?
We dont want ai, Mozilla. We dont want it.
Oh, the people who give them money want it.
And they value their opinion more then everyone else’s
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.
Can I just take my Firefox Profile directory, and copy it over to LibreWolf? Does anybody know?
So much whining… Please get to know the things you attack, before you embarrass yourself.
Do you know what a “build in AI” is? It’s just some algorithms that makes your day easier. And no one steals your data… sigh
It’s a local collection of algorithms, and you are quite safe. You probably already use it in so many ways you can’t count them - it’s just not called “AI” which I guess is the trigger word for you…
I certainly want it. The current anti-AI wave is irrational.
That isn’t to say that AI is not a major potential existential problem when it goes to AGI and to ASI, or that AI in the hands of private Oligarch psychos are not a catastrophe, but the current hatred is of a different kind, are off the charts, actually evil, and have no relation to the tool it self, or the potential existential risks. The group have already been consumed by hatred and unfortunately, they are now also attacking ordinary Lemmy users that ‘admit’ that they use AI, or ‘admit’ that they treat it as a ‘friend’. You have all seen this. People just mentioning AI are downvoted and hated upon, people that use AI always get a “AI slop !” remark with them on their way. A large percentage, like this post, are subtly attacking that others even have a choice of utilizing AI in their daily life - because they hate it. This is kinder-garden level bullying !
Most of the daily worries of AI, stems from the societal system we are in. Job loss (It’s build into the current system!), ‘AI’-slop (as if Capitalism didn’t create slop?), ‘Copyright’ idiocy that are only necessary in a combative type of society, AI+biz out-competing ordinary people, becoming poor, homeless etc, big monetary/political powers consolidating more power by misusing AI, an incredible amount of propaganda/marketing and manipulation and so on. The old system is incompatible with AI, so people are seeing things go in a wrong way, and feeling the cracks and dissonance between an old failing system, and the new possibilities we have. We - humanity - are in a transitional phase, where the old systems we follow, are no longer adequate, and will implode/convulse in to a new stable system. But the old system is stubbornly trying to keep going, while not having any answers, or any will, to adapt or even discuss the internal dissonance that are accelerating. THAT is the problem! Almost all current ‘AI’ problems that result in this hate backlash - comes directly from the failing type of society we have - not the tool/technology it self ! People should focus on the root-problem, not the tool it-self, and certainly not other users that need it.
This whole group of angry people need to chill tf out and admit to them selves that they are mis-directing their hatred (valid or not), and that their hate are currently harming other ordinary people - not much different from them selves. Stop bullying others just because you can’t handle the inherent failings of the old crap system, a system build on pure combative ideology, “by the oligarchs, for the oligarchs”. Stop fighting for ‘Jobs’, and start fighting for a system where we don’t need ‘Jobs’, Stop fighting for ‘Copyright’, or any of the other insane protectionist ‘patches’ to the current bunkers society/ideology, and start fighting for a society where we don’t have to hoard ‘property’ to survive. Fight for a society that are compatible with where we are technologically/philosophically, one that are actually designed/intended to be compatible with peoples needs and their humble wishes for a safe and stimulating future.
Lastly, being worried/focused on an ASI takeover of humanity, or common people being (more) controlled by the Oligarchs/Big Corp, etc, is completely legit, and it absolutely needs to be talked about, but this group of haters is just hating ‘AI’ and people using it in general, for the wrong reasons, and then lashing out towards those people that enjoy/need it now. (Good for you if you don’t need it in this society).
This bullying has to stop. In the mean time, I and many others, are starting to use current AI to design/build systems that bring us all over this ideological molasses we are in, and land us on the other side as fast and safely as we can. You should probably do the same instead of being consumed by anger, but that is your choice to make. Thanks for reading.
