Am I being overly critical here or is this kind of a silly position to have right after talking about how neural machine translation is okay? Many of Firefox's LLM features like summarization afaik are powered by local models (hell even Chrome has local model options). It's weird to say neural translation is not a black box but LLMs are somehow black boxes that we cannot hope to understand what they do with the data, especially when viewed a bit fuzzily LLMs are scaled up versions of an architecture that was originally used for neural translation. Neural translation also has unverifiable behavior in the same sense.

I could interpret some of the data talk as talking about non local models but this very much seems like a more general criticism of LLMs as a whole when talking about Firefox features. Moreover, some of the critiques like verifiability of outputs and unlimited scope still don't make sense in this context. Browser LLM features except for explicitly AI browsers like Comet have so far had some scoping to their behavior, either in very narrow scopes like translation or summarization. The broadest scope I can think of is the side panels that show up which allow you to ask about a web page with context. Even then, I do not see what is inherently problematic about such scoping since the output behavior is confined to the side panel.

This really weakens the point of the post. It strikes me as a: we just don't like those AIs. Bergamot's model's behavior is no more or less auditable or a black box than an LLM's behavior. If you really want to go dig into a Llama 7B model, you definitely can. Even Bergamot's underlying model has an option to be transformer-based: https://marian-nmt.github.io/docs/

The premise of non-corporate AI is respectable but I don't understand the hate for LLMs. Local inference is laudable, but being close-minded about solutions is not interesting.

Then everyone who wants AI can have it and those that don't .... don't.

[Update]: as I posted below, sample use cases would include translation, article summarization, asking questions from a long wiki page... and maybe with some agents built-in as well: parallelizing a form filling/ecom task, having the agent transcribe/translate an audio/video in real time, etc

https://mozilla.github.io/policy-templates/#generativeai

https://mozilla.github.io/policy-templates/#preferences

https://searchfox.org/firefox-main/source/browser/app/profil...

https://searchfox.org/firefox-main/source/modules/libpref/in...

I get the utility that this stuff can have for certain types of activities but on top of not having great hardware to run the dang things, I just don't find any of the proposed use-cases that compelling for me personally.

It's just nice that the totalizing self-insistence of AI tech hasn't gobbled up every corner of the tech space, even if those crevices and niches are getting smaller by the day.

LLMs are also a tool, but it is not necessary for web browsing. It should be installed into a browser as extension, or integrated as such, so it should be quite easily enabled, or disabled. Surely it should not be intertwined with the browser in a meaningful way imho.

> If AI browsers dominate and then falter, if users discover they want something simpler and more trustworthy, Waterfox will still be here, marching patiently along.

This is basically their train of thought: provide something different for people who truly need it. There's nothing to criticize about.

However, let's don't forget that other browsers can remove/disable AI features just as fast as they add them. If Waterfox wants to be *more than just an alternative* (a.k.a. be a competitor), they needs discover what people actually need and optimize heavily on that. But this is hard to do because people don't show their true motives.

Maybe one day, it turned out that people do just want an AI that "think for them". That would be awkward, to say the least.

Here are what I find as reasons to scream about Mozilla:

Popups:

(a) Several times a day, my attention and concentration get interrupted by, for me, the unwelcome announcement that there is a new version I can download. A new version can have changes I don't like and genuine bugs. Sure, I could keep a copy of my favorite version from history, but that is system management mud wrestling and interruption of my work.

(b) Now I get told several times a day that my computer and cell phone can share access to a Web page. In this action Mozilla covers up what that page was showing I wanted it to show. No thanks. When I'm at my computer, AMD 8 core processor, all my files and software tools, and 1 Gbps optical fiber connection to the Internet and looking at a Web page, I want nothing to do with a cell phone's presentation of a, that, Web page.

(c) Some URLs are a dozen lines long and Mozilla finds ways to present such URLs with all their lines and pursue clearly their main objective -- cover up the desired content.

Mozilla needs to make their covering up, changing, the screen optional or just eliminated.

Want me to donate? You've mentioned as little as $10. Deal: Raise the $10 by a factor of 5 AND quit covering up my content and interrupting my work, and we've got a deal.

Are they, though? I get bombarded by AI ads very frequently and I have yet to see anything from those "AI browsers" mentioned on the article.

Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46288491

When they say "AI browsers are proliferating." and "Their lunch is being eaten by AI browsers." what does that mean? What's an "AI Browser", and are they really gaining significant market share? For what?

I found this (1) that suggests that several "AI Browsers" exist, which is "proliferating" in a sense.

1) https://www.waterfox.com/blog/no-ai-here-response-to-mozilla...

> Alphabet themselves reportedly see the writing on the wall, developing what appears to be a new browser separate from Chrome.

at this point it’s more so a sandbox runtime bordering an OS, but okay

99.9% of people haven’t ever had one single thought about how their software works. I don’t think they will be overwhelmed with cognitive load. Quite the opposite.

The black box objection disqualifies Widevine.