• @TropicalDingdong
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    109 months ago

    The second they start sticking AI bloat in Firefox, I’m out.

    • Deebster
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      338 months ago

      Are you informed about what they’re using AI for? One example is in-browser translations, which allows it to work offline and be privacy-respecting (no calls to Google, etc).

      • @TropicalDingdong
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        138 months ago

        If they want to build extensions that do those things, I fully support them.

        I don’t need or want my engineering team building my browser doing things other than building my browser. I want them working on the browser. I need AI I didn’t ask for in my browser like I need an additional hole in my head.

        I want my browser to be a browser and if Firefox isn’t focused on just building a great browser, I’m leaving.

            • @[email protected]
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              158 months ago

              I don’t really know any real alternative if you value privacy and the openness of the web?
              There are 3 companies making (as in putting the real work into it) browsers, Apple Google and Mozilla. Apple is only serving its own interests, and Google has clearly indicated where they want the web to go (more ads, less blockers, more tracking).

              • Timwi
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                38 months ago

                There are plenty of forks of Firefox, many of which will likely not follow Mozilla’s lead when it comes to adding non-essential functionality to the core product.

                • @[email protected]
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                  18 months ago

                  Ok, but you’re still using firefox under the hood. Same story as the chrome reskins: you are beholden to what upstream does. You can go around limitations and do stuff differently, but pretty sure it’s not the forks that will keep eg. the extension manifest V2 alive in chrome to be able to have a real ad blocker.

                • @[email protected]
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                  78 months ago

                  Another Chromium skin

                  In 2016, Opera, developed in Norway, became a subsidiary of an investment group led by a Chinese consortium.

                  The company released a gaming-oriented version of the browser, Opera GX, in 2019, and a blockchain-focused Opera Crypto Browser into public beta in January 2022. In April 2023, the company announced a major overhaul to the browser called Opera 100 and code-named “Opera One”, adding a new user interface and several AI-related features.

                  Opera users also have access to Opera News, a news app based on an AI platform.

                  Uhhh

    • joewilliams007
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      108 months ago

      why, when it can actually be helpful? Using chatgpt for searches is already much faster than denying 10 cookie banners. Some more privacy focused AI would be great, if firefox does that.

      • Kichae
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        208 months ago

        Using chatgpt for searches

        I cannot stress this enough: LLMs are not, have never been, and quite likely never will be search engines. You may as well ask your a auto-complete questions.

        • MxM111
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          38 months ago

          But LLM can and do use search engines and create summary of the search with references to actual pages, where they found this information. ChatGPT saves tons of time by doing search for you. Want to double check? Go and click the reference. But so far it was very reliable in my experience.

        • @[email protected]
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          18 months ago

          They are better than search engines. I can ask anything and get a good answer in a second, without having to search the web.

          • Norgur
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            48 months ago

            Thing is you don’t know if the answer is good. The answer looks good, yes, but how could you tell if ChatGPT just pulled the thing you looked for out of it’s digital behind?

            • emmanuel_car
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              48 months ago

              Exactly, without knowing the source(s) you can’t determine the quality of the answer. Although in saying that, I imagine people who use ChatGPT as a search engine might also not be super critical of search results.

          • Timwi
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            38 months ago

            This is a dangerous attitude. You’re blindly trusting everything the LLM says. You will be susceptible to misinformation.

              • Timwi
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                18 months ago

                I figured, but this thread wasn’t specifically about helping with code. It was about replacing search engines. Common uses of search engines include finding information about ongoing events, e.g. the COVID pandemic or an upcoming election. Your comment implied that you thought this information is better obtained from ChatGPT than from Google.

                • @[email protected]
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                  18 months ago

                  Well I use Kagi but sure, for ongoing events a search engine is the only way currently since chat gpt won’t have the latest events. :)

                  I expect that to change though, and we will all use chat bots instead of search engines in the future.

      • @TropicalDingdong
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        118 months ago

        You miss the point. This takes away from them actually building and maintaining a browser. If they want to do this as a plug in or something, that’s fine. I do not want it and am not interested in anything AI related being built into the browser. Its that toxic, VC mindset around everything having to be everything and following the hype of the moment. Its dumb and the announcement was a redflag warning.

        • Deebster
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          38 months ago

          Why should it be relegated to a plug-in? It is a feature everyone would find useful because no-one speaks every language. Also, since Chrome has this feature, new users would expect to have it work without having to research which plug-in to use.

          You might not want to use it, but some people don’t use Firefox bookmarks and you don’t hear them demanding that bookmarks be moved to a plug-in. It’s been a very long time since a browser was solely an HTML renderer, and while people were also against CSS and scripting at first, we’ve moved on.

          “AI” has been used for many things for many years. The fact that the news is full of machine learning and generative AI doesn’t mean that it’s sensible to condemn anything using it.

          • @TropicalDingdong
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            28 months ago

            “AI” has been used for many things for many years. The fact that the news is full of machine learning and generative AI doesn’t mean that it’s sensible to condemn anything using it.

            Maybe you should move onto Edge. I hear they are big on AI in the browser.

      • Jean-Francois Mezei
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        38 months ago

        @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] I disable searching in the browser. When I wish to search, I go to a specific search engine web page.
        When users have to work to DISABLE stuff in a browser, it reduces the trust people have in the browser. Consider why people have been switching back to Firefox, and now you are making the same mistakes that drove people away fro their former browsers.

        KEEP IT SIMPLE AND TRUSTWORTHY.

        • Deebster
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          38 months ago

          Are you saying you’ve disabled searching from the address bar and instead load up whatever.com and then type your search into there? I don’t understand what you think you’re gaining by enforcing this extra step.

      • @[email protected]
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        28 months ago

        I have some genuine hope for this plus the semantic web. Have quick general answers be answered by the LLM, and use it to also generate vector (or a knowledge graph from wikidata) results of the other content on the internet so that if want to dig deeper it can ingest a specific sources data (or route to an models with that info already embedded) or just return it to you for your personal reading.

        Pretty exciting tbh, and hopefully all open source, open data, on local or distributed systems!

        At least all the pieces are moving to make that possible.

      • akatsukilevi
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        28 months ago

        Nope, I’m with Tropical here
        Long time Firefox user, but if they start shoving AI stuff into it, I’m out
        Servo is looking kinda fine there, might as well make my own browser

        • @[email protected]
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          18 months ago

          I mean Servo was what Firefox was working on, and imagine still the roadmap to reintegrate into Firefox in the future.