Chrome experimental AI features
blog.google
blog.google
The future is (almost) now: SponsorBlock[1] skips embedded ads in YouTube videos, based on crowdfunded timestamps.
"The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe."
I wondered if generative models make any differences here so just tried it and a bit disappointed, it's consistently returning an error with a message "Tab groups suggestions are currently unavailable". It's just launched and the team might be experiencing lots of pages, perhaps I should try this again later.
I looked in Experiments and it's not there either.
It's updated to the latest version.
AFAIK, this is geo limited to the US, at least for now.
It organizes tabs and bookmarks by content similarity and does little more. Designed for tab hoarders in mind. :)
- summarise an article
- find information on a given topic (free-form input text)
- full voice control ("click that link", "read that article", "find this")
- auto-submit a captcha
Summarizing an article seems like something everyone else can do OK. It's a huge avenue for bias (maybe that's why it's reasonably elided) but at least it's actually useful.
If something automates their creation then there is absolutely an advantage to sites that can subvert the classification method, because users will start with the "banking site" expectation instead of no expectation at all.
Worrying about this as a potential threat is on the same level as my bank "disabling" right click.
Funny, naming things, whether variables or groups of things is the main reason I use LLMs to date. Add in grouping as well and that handles something that puts me under a lot of cognitive load, because I can never shake the feeling I have ot yet manually grouped things optimally.
we have come full circle
2. That doesn't really seem like a Chrome feature? Belongs more on Bard.
3. That seems like a Google Assistant feature too, some of that actually may work on a pixel phone, though might be nice to have on desktop too.
4. Will never happen. Google themselves have a captcha product so defeats the point.
[0] https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/14163109?hl=en
Which is actually the first non-novelty AI tool I've heard someone pitch that actually sounded like a good idea. Way more visible failure mode than summarizing.
It is only on the Pixel 8, not the previous models and their mid-range $ variants so they aren't giving it away for free just yet
https://store.google.com/intl/en/ideas/articles/pixel-featur...
- Let me chat with a bot that knows the information from the collection
- Use the information to generate a summary
- Let me guide it in generating a well sourced article
Build a knowledge graph from the web
- Trace a source of information back to the originating point to help eliminate derivative blog spam
- Help moderate media bias and challenge echo chambers
Automatically recognize spam, scams, etc.
Let me describe something I need in text, return back links to shopping sites that sell that thing, if nobody has it, generate a 3d model, or more formal description of it and supply me with connections to let me farm it out to an additive manufacture, one-off makerspace place or something.
- The circle continues
At some point the hype will die down and we'll find out where these tools actually fit, but yeah right now it's madness.
Having said that chrome customization has always kinda bit me in the butt eventually when something changes and looks odd now and ... I just tend to avoid it altogether now.
https://addons.mozilla.org/uk/firefox/addon/tochunka-smart-t...
If it works by you hover over a link and Google gets the content in the browser behind the scenes and sends it to the mothership, where it's summarized and the summary then sent back to you to be displayed by the browser, then you may be accessing the linked page using your stored credentials, which give Google access to content they wouldn't otherwise have access to.
Edit: I stand corrected, Firefox does it offline! Thank you, Firefox team, this is awesome and I'll likely be using it more often now :)
Edit: the suggestion that translation functionality already does this is valid though perhaps this expands the scope to data in the users default language?
But it's intense, even with a very finicky, efficient runtime on a strong desktop. Local LLM hosting is not something you want to impose on users unless they are acutely aware of it, or unless its a full stack hardware/software platform (like the Google Pixel) where the vendor can "hide" the undesirable effects on system performance.
I think that's a reasonable generalization to make.
It produces a considerable amount of heat unless it's run on an NPU, which basically doesn't happen on desktops at the moment.
Hot loading/unloading it can be slow even on an SSD.
Users often multitask with chrome in the background, and I think many would be very displeased to find Chrome bogging down their computer for reasons they may not be aware of.
Theoretically Google could run a very small (less than 2B?) LLM with very fast quantization, and maybe even work out how to use desktop NPUs, but that would be one heck of an engineering feat to deploy on the scale of Chrome.
Honestly not sure how much RAM that'd take but to me, it sounds like bloat
The back button in Chrome sometimes help but I still lose long messages all the time.
edit: tone
What do you use it for that you think would benefit me?
It's also pretty good for generating pointers for a complex solution. Like I try to figure out something in the non-JPA old version of EclipseLink, so I ask ChatGPT. The generated code is very often wrong, but it often points me into a right direction.
I might've had more use when I was new to programming but my workflow these days is pretty solid and I don't see myself saving time by typing prompts and debugging output rather than just coding.
If it is too complex for me to understand I wouldn't really trust the output anyway and might spend a lot more time sanity checking the generated code and it might not be very useful in the end. I'll try someday if I really get stuck, I expect to get disappointed though.
Asking GPT to summarize something like that is beyond lazy.
Side-note: stop using google as a verb, you're "searching", teach your peers that there are alternatives that are both better and won't ask you for your first born.
Side-note to your side-note: No. Stop acting like some holier than thou elitist. You're coming off as a luddite.
Won't help with rearranging/grouping tabs, but can definitely help rephrase text in input fields or looking up info.
If they keep it up, this might actually threaten Googles browser dominance.
On the AI end though Microsoft aggresively pursues support for other AI providers (Mistral and Lamma both being on Azure API's now), Google tying themselves to Gemini seems to be tying themselves to the best they can do while Microsoft seems to be accruing the best they can get.
I’ve tried it a couple of times (when Bing AI chat was still Edge-only) and was extremely put off by all the coupons, rewards, and other distractions.
I'm not daily driving Edge yet, but I do use it now and then and have been positively surprised a couple times.
And bookmark organization is worse since it's a separate UI breaking your mental connection to the physical layout that you spend most of the time with
As of late, most of my public written responses (bar HN) have had some sort of collaboration with ChatGPT, and I've often wondered about a native browser integration. For those of us who struggle with communication, this is an exciting prospect!
As someone who seriously utilizes this particular tool, what do you think of those issues? For example, do you feel like the result has your own voice? Your own specific, precise thoughts? Does it help or hurt growth in communication skill? How do those things play out in real application of the technology and what is the best way to use it?
Incidentally, communication is a strong point for me and therefore ChatGPT doesn't benefit me much in that respect. I hate to think that my skill has lost most of its value, but working in technology, I can hardly complain when it happens to me: Are communication skills even needed now, or how has that need changed?
For me personally, communication is arduous. I struggle daily to articulate what I want to say in a logical and efficient manner, let alone in a graceful or artistic one. I've noticed my vocabulary and communication skill has regressed as I get older, despite efforts to improve it.
Overall, ChatGPT has helped tremendously. I never had a written communication style that I was proud of, so I'm happy to assume its more generic tone of voice. If language fulfills its primary purpose, to get a point across, that's enough for me. Any kind of inherent artistic integrity is above my pay grade, so to speak.
Yes, even on HN people despise anything that violates norms (unless it's promoted by a megalomaniac).
Thanks for sharing your experiences. It's great there's now a tool for that need.
Now that I think about it, a Clippy that interviews you about needs and follows your browsing session to highlight stuff you like / don't like and propose questions to ask would be pretty sweet.
I also find the UX much better than typical LLMs that require you to write a prompt first; it simply suggests continuations of your sentences that you can accept or ignore, without requiring you to switch your mind between writing for your intended email recipient and writing a prompt for the LLM.
Or they could use an LLM to translate it back to clear and concise, I suppose. But then what is it even for?