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Comment by redundantly | Hacker News Reader

crosses fingers Please no AI, please no AI, just security and performance improvements. Please no AI.

> We are approaching the use of AI in Firefox...

Dammit

Cheap laugh. When you look at the actual example they provide, it seems like a useful feature, and not at all on the AI hype train:

> AI-generated alt-text for images inserted into PDFs, which makes it more accessible to visually impaired users and people with learning disabilities.

Also, they made a point of talking about privacy and saying it was processed on-device.

That sounds like a great feature for those that need it. As long as those that do not can turn it off, I can't see an issue with it.

It specifically says that it will run in-service, I can't imagine that it would do such resource heavy task without user action.

I'd rather have to turn it on than turn it off.

We'll have the option to turn it off until that option is removed for being a maintenance burden. See e.g. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=755593

It seems very much like a nuclear bomb used to go hunting for deer. I'm sure it will be useful to some, but it's the sort of specialized activity that is better left to extensions, particularly when they carry heavy infrastructural burdens that are then paid by everyone.

Chances that someone went "how can I justify playing with the new shiny?" are very, very high. Responsible leadership should take away the toys before they do something stupid.

I dont want my pdfs being scanned by a model to generate alt text of all things

Good thing you’re not the only user with an opinion

Don't use it, I guess. You can disable almost everything on Firefox.

Haha. Everyone is working on AI now. It's the latest Blockchain, NFT etc.

Many of these "products" are just hot air. Time will weed out the crap. It's not like we're stuck with nonsense Blockchain features now from the last hype (even though signal and others did work to implement that BS, it's not in the way or even remotely relevant)

I’d love to have a local LLM in Firefox to summarize pages, generate boilerplate in email responses etc.

They recently added a fully local translation feature and I love it.

Just write your own damn email my word. Imagine you text your friend and an ai model replies. Thats what you are doing to your coworkers.

If you can convince the entire business world to get rid of formalities, please do go ahead! Otherwise, don't patronize people for using tools that make their jobs/lives easier.

English is also not everyone's first language, and sometimes details like a non-awkward salutation or signing off of an email do matter.

Andre Natal and I did the Firefox translation feature. It started as a research project with Mozilla and some EU schools and was called Bergamot. We adapted that for Firefox starting a couple years ago and shipped last year. The technology was a perfect fit for the user feature.

I think the same holds for summarization (a Reader View feature maybe?) and as someone what was on Firefox's A11Y team for almost 5 years, I think there's some work Mozilla could do with image alt text and perhaps fixing up some common quirks that trip up screen readers so they don't have to do that fixing themselves.

There are several places I believe this relatively new tech fits perfectly with web browser use cases. Those mostly aren't monetize-able though, so they're "for users" not "for money" and users don't really seem to be up for grabs these days, too locked into their routines, and so those features may not even be competitive advantages.

Still, doing good for your existing user base by incorporating new tech that fits their use cases well, even if it doesn't make you more money or win you more uses is a good thing and the fact that Mozilla's not chasing growth like FANG and others means they can do more of that unprofitable "good stuff."

I worked on Mozilla for 25 years. It was an amazing ride and knowing what I know about Mozilla I feel confident they'll behave not just responsibly with AI, but as paragons of virtue and a north star for the industry (and perhaps even for governments as the Mozilla Foundation has been working on responsible AI for half a decade and is in regular contact with the US and EU governments on just these kinds of issues.)

Andre Natal and I built the first real AI into Firefox starting a couple years ago with Firefox translations. The models are fully local, downloaded on demand, and pivot around English so you only need a few to get pretty good coverage. It's an excellent use of the technology.

15 years ago, machine learning started making its way into Firefox in a big way with the Awesomebar's learning algorithms that get the sites you visit frequently auto-completing easier. That work was mostly Ed Lee in the early days and makes Firefox's addressbar far superior to Chromes (and back then Chrome said it was a superior algo but they couldn't take the 10 ms hit to the Omnibox popup performance so users could just type a lot more to get where they wanted to go).

Nevermind that, I'm just happy that finally they are done with their constant reshuffling and removal of options in the UI.

  > More streamlined menus that reduce visual clutter and prioritize top user actions so you can get to the important things quicker.

...crap...

Yes, I am looking forward to more userChrome.css changes to un-streamline the damn URL bar back above the tabs once again, as well as to undo whatever other obnoxious UI changes they decide to inflict on us. It's become a regular ritual, performed with much cursing and gnashing of teeth.

On a more positive note, the constant stream of UI updates that used to wreck my userChrome.css fixes led me to switch to the TreeStyleTabs extension. Combined with a few extensions to the base TST extension (yes, extensions for an extension), the UI is now quite comfortable, even with a large number of tabs (SimpleTabGroups extension can help when things become unmanageable).

Above the tabs? I need to see that.

I hope WaterFox/LibreWolf will remove those AI stuff. Or give option to disable.

Hey, at least it's not Blockchain!

Come on.. "hey Firefox, can you give me a summary of what's being said on my FB groups ont the side panel, and keep that updated every morning? Ho, and can you show me a boorkmak to start the coffee machine when I browse before 11am?"

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