TL;DR: Mozilla recently released AI controls for Firefox: a single control panel that lets people disable AI features in the browser or pick and choose which to leave on. On the surface, this sounds like a win for user choice in an era of AI-everything.
If we dig deeper, you can start to see that the kill switch isn’t the whole story. This feature acts like an accountability sink. By giving you an off-switch, Mozilla’s leadership shifts the ethical burden of AI onto the user - turning their design choices into your responsibility.
Oh for fucks sake, you don't even have to turn it off, just don't use the AI functions if you don't want to. Like translate or Image Caption for the blind.
The AI functions don't do shit unless you use them.
They don't slow your browser down, and they don't eat resources as is so often claimed.
Stop the fucking Mozilla hate.
Mozilla only has finite time, money, and resources, so the impact of these features is a detriment to even the people who don't use them. Those resources could have been better budgeted.
For example, "image caption for the blind" sounds great, but do you know how worthless it actually is? For starters, you can't use it on any webpage...
Well said. Everyone is crying about Mozilla dipping their toes in AI, while at the same time, ignoring Windows telemetry, Google's push for manifest v3 with chrome and so much more.
It's so stupid
Some of us don't run Windows. I have blogged about Manifest v3, FWIW.
It's understandable. Those other examples are completely expected. For a FOSS project people have higher expectations and feel betrayed by Mozilla's moves with this.
You're posting this statement on Lemmy? There is a dispropotionatly high population of Linux and OSX users here. Most of those here ignoring Windows telemetry aren't running Windows.
Yes and no, this is not about others being worse, it's about being a total non issue in Firefox.
First is that if you don't use them, the Firefox AI features do NOTHING. And on top of that you can disable them completely.
I understand your guys thing in general but really such a big thing should be opt in. I mean heck I would prefer to not even download the components but I get that is not feasible. Still it would be super simple to have it off by default and have a popup asking if the person wanted ai features enabled with an at least on option being no. never.
Most ordinary users never make a setting change,having it off by default, would make it so those users will never be aware the features are there, and having translation available on the address bar is a major feature.
Since they do no harm, I can honestly not see a reason why it should be opt in?
The people that want to turn it off are just contrarian, and possibly oppose AI as some sort of principle, disregarding that in this case it actually helps people that want to read articles in other languages, and blind people to have meaningful captions on pictures that aren't properly captioned for the blind.
You do you, but this is not you doing you, you are being contrary at far greater cost to other people, regarding something that shouldn't even be an inconvenience to you. You just choose to be difficult without having a real reason. Except you hate the word AI.
What AI feature is it exactly, that you think is detrimental to your normal use of Firefox?
Why? And how many other features would you prefer not to download? The plugins interface maybe? Video and audio Codecs? Support for PNG? The theming capability? How many plugins do you have? What about AI features is it that is so especially horrible to you?
well again given the use of popups for other things that are opt in I don't see why it can't be used here. most users can say yes to a popup and no to one if the popup gives that option. Again im not wild about the llm code even being in the system as its all just bloat. Off by default just makes it easier while I move away from the software.
Here you go:
https://www.brow.sh/
If you want a lean no bloat Web Browser there are many that fit that label way better than Firefox.
Firefox was always a full featured browser with more features than most.
Another nice little browser would be Falkon:
https://www.falkon.org/
There are dozens of such browsers, Firefox is great because it's complete, go get your incomplete browser with only aged features elsewhere, that doesn't have the new features Firefox offer.
Some of us use for instance the page translation quite often. If you are not used to that, you are limiting your browsing to only sources in languages you understand. I understand 5 languages, but not for instance Chinese and French.