I don't need or want any of that AI crap in my browser. Hopefully there will be a compiler flag to disable it.
this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2024
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For what it's worth... I think there are useful AI tools. For example the offline translation feature that doesn't send your content to google is something they recently introduced. I'd also like to see someone compete with a decent and open text-to-speech solution that gets wide adoption... And the idea of flagging fake reviews doesn't sound too bad (I haven't tried it.) I mean people are complaining about SEO making google unusable and fake news only ever getting more. I can see some benefit there - if done right.
But we definitely don't need a Clippy 2.0 or another smart assistant. And I don't think everything has to be embedded in a browser and make it yet more complicated and bigger, or implemented in the operating system. An add-on will probably do.
(Edit: And I sometimes don't understand Mozilla. Why not focus on their core product and make that exceptionally great? If they're already struggling... What's with all these side-projects and dabbling in AI anyways?)
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I am very skeptical when it comes to machine learning and all the hype surrounding it, but it's not all bad. For example an improved firefox translate would be a nice feature to have. There might also be some usecases for accessibility or adblocking.
In general, I agree, but it seems Mozilla is trying to do the right thing by AI. Offline translation is neat. And the Review Checker they just introduced uses AI to spot fake Amazon reviews. I think that's pretty cool.
The article says nothing about incorporating AI into the browser.
Firefox is diversifying it's offerings, and focusing on two discrete projects.
From the article:
Mozilla seized an opportunity to bring trustworthy AI into Firefox, largely driven by the Fakespot acquisition and the product integration work that followed. Additionally, finding great content is still a critical use case for the internet. Therefore, as part of the changes today, we will be bringing together Pocket, Content, and the AI/ML teams supporting content with the Firefox Organization.
Seems like they’re planning to incorporate AI into the browser.
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Can they just focus on the browser? I really don't need the AI stuff.
The issue is that Firefox alone doesn't pay the bills and I'd imagine they really want to get away from being dependent on the Google deal they have.
We don't need AI stuff but if they can get some good funding from it, they can put more into the browser
Arguably the issue here is that Firefox pays too many of the bills, directly from its main competitor
Yeah, fair I could have worded that better. Finding better ways of funding is the goal
so they build the thing that pretty much everyone is running at a loss...
how will putting AI in Firefox get them funding?
That's not what they're doing. They're going to focus on two separate products: Firefox and AI.
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If AI stays, Mozilla would be better off to still have some irons in the fire.
Focusing on FF: Yay!
Adding AI to FF: NOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooo!
A browser AI to detect AI shenanigans on websites would be awesome. Let the AI wars begin!
fuuk this AI bubble. the browser is one place where ai is not needed
Actually I think AI in browser could potentially become a much more effective content blocker than ad blockers like ublock in the future.
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One feature that is currently using a trained model for local processing is Firefox Translations. There are good use for AI that can enhance privacy, but yeah the trend of slapping AI on everything because it is trendy to do so must end.
I dunno, having a free, open model made by a trusted company would be nice. I like initiatives like Mozilla Voice, this could be something similar. Probably not great if it's replacing focus on the other things though.
it refocuses on Firefox
🤩
and AI
😩
I love Firefox. Don't screw it up, Mozilla.
Bet
Sigh, and here I was, thinking Microsoft trying to shove its useless (to me) AI down my throat at every opportunity was annoying... Quo vadis Mozilla, what are you guys doing... :(
Ai is coming either way. It’s not really avoidable, and if Mozilla were to divest from that area too they would set themselves up for failure. A few years down the road all browsers will have some sort of ai integration, perhaps large parts of the web too. If Mozilla doesn’t keep up it will just become entirely irrelevant and the internet will be fully controlled by google and its chromium bs.
Besides, what they did so far is really neat and how I would like to see ai integrated: offline translation features on your local device, not somewhere under control of some corporation. More of that please
Unfortunately Mozilla's brand new CEO is a McKinsey ghoul: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chamberslaura/
She spent 2 yrs at McK 20+ yrs ago - hardly a personality-defining milestone, given how a lot of business students start their career in consulting.
I mean that's pretty standard for a McKinsey ghoul:
- Step 1: go to an ivy league college, get a business degree
- Step 2: work for McKinsey for a few years as an associate
- Step 3: get a job at a McKinsey client leapfrogging everyone else into management/c-suite
- Step 4: hire McKinsey to bring their arrogant children into your org and screw things up
Everything about her subsequent career has been going from one upper management/c-suite role in a tech company to another. This is not the resume of a person who should be running a nonprofit that controls the most important open source project on the internet. But beyond that just look at what she's done in her one month at Mozilla:
-
- Massive round of layoffs
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- "Focus on {buzzword}" where {buzzword} in this case is AI
That's straight out of the McKinsey playbook.
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Specifically, Mozilla plans to scale back its investment in a number of products, including its VPN, Relay and, somewhat remarkably, its Online Footprint Scrubber
IMO these were their best products. 🙁
Going forward, the company said in an internal memo, Mozilla will focus on bringing “trustworthy AI into Firefox.” To do so, it will bring together the teams that work on Pocket, Content and AI/Ml.
Ugh, god damn it.
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While we resourced mozilla.social heavily to pursue this ambitious idea,
How many people do you need to administer a Mastodon instance? I'm pretty sure infosec.exchange is like one dude.
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The worst enemy of Mozilla is: Mozilla. This hasn't changed in many years.
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I thought they switched CEOs to focus on privacy a week or so ago?
The data privacy angle was just editorialized headlines, the CEO statement did not mention it.
Specifically, Mozilla plans to scale back its investment in a number of products, including its VPN, Relay and, somewhat remarkably, its Online Footprint Scrubber, which launched only a week ago.
I just purchased an annual plan for Monitor, partially to help Mozilla. I guess this is my thanks
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We dont want AI or pocket you assholes. We want a secure browser. Stop wasting your money on this shit
This is awful lol
Oh for Fox’s sake!!!
That interim CEO seems like they suck; I hope they don't stay.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
After installing a new interim CEO earlier this month, Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox browser, is making some major changes to its product strategy, TechCrunch has learned.
Specifically, Mozilla plans to scale back its investment in a number of products, including its VPN, Relay and, somewhat remarkably, its Online Footprint Scrubber, which launched only a week ago.
Going forward, the company said in an internal memo, Mozilla will focus on bringing “trustworthy AI into Firefox.” To do so, it will bring together the teams that work on Pocket, Content and AI/Ml.
Mozilla started expanding its product portfolio in recent years, all while its flagship product, Firefox, kept losing market share.
And while the organization was often sharply criticized for this, its leadership argued that diversifying its product portfolio beyond Firefox was necessary to ensure Mozilla’s survival in the long run.
Firefox, after all, provided the vast majority of Mozilla’s income, but it also meant the organization was essentially dependent on Google to continue this deal.
The original article contains 234 words, the summary contains 166 words. Saved 29%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Lots of immediate hate for AI, but I'm all for local AI if they keep that direction. Small models are getting really impressive, and if they have smaller, fine-tuned, specific-purpose AI over the "general purpose" LLMs, they'd be much more efficient at their jobs. I've been rocking local LLMs for a while and they've been great as a small compliment to language processing tasks in my coding.
Good text-to-speech, page summarization, contextual content blocking, translation, bias/sentiment detection, click bait detection, article re-titling, I'm sure there's many great use cases. And purely speculation,but many traditional non-llm techniques might be able to included here that were overlooked because nobody cared about AI features, that could be super lightweight and still helpful.
If it goes fully remote AI, it loses a lot of privacy cred, and positions itself really similarly to where everyone else is. From a financial perspective, bandwagoning on AI in the browser but "we won't send your data anywhere" seems like a trendy, but potentially helpful and effective way to bring in a demographic interested in it without sacrificing principles.
But there's a lot of speculation in this comment. Mozilla's done a lot for FOSS, and I get they need monetization outside of Google, but hopefully it doesn't lead things astray too hard.
Kinda disappointing how much of the community just takes a giant 💩 on Mozilla whatever it does these days. Funding open source is super crazy hard folks. Notice that the really successful well funded projects are fueled by megacorps?
Offering constructive criticism is great but if you don't have better ideas around how to fund an open browser without selling your soul to GOOG or MSFT then perhaps your energy might be better spent elsewhere.
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Not sure what to think about this.
At the very least I don't feel like I need more out of Firefox than it has today. If it all goes to shit, then a free Firefox Ala chromium would do fine.
I remember what happened last time. Gradually the web will become unusable if you're not using Chrome. That's how it worked back in the day with Internet Explorer. Microsoft even began hooking things into IE that can only work on windows (activex controls) and then getting websites to support them.
When I first started using Linux I had to switch to Netscape 4.7 because it was the only browser available and the web barely worked. I remember thinking "well, the web sucks on Linux but I guess I can live without it."
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