8 ms·

Seems like a reasonable and thought-out decision to me. Not sure why the comments here are so negative. Clearly LLMs don’t fit into Vivaldi’s vision and the fea

Seems like a reasonable and thought-out decision to me. Not sure why the comments here are so negative. Clearly LLMs don’t fit into Vivaldi’s vision and the features they’d like to provide to their users.

stavros 2y ago
For me I think it's because the article appears biased. It's not just "we can't think of any problem it'd solve", it's "LLMs are bad and you should feel bad for liking them".
- pprotas 2y ago
  I don't really have that feeling. The author says that LLMs make stuff up and are often wrong about non-widely known facts. They present hallucinations in a confident way, which makes them come across as liars. This is true. That is exactly what the most popular LLMs do. They don't say that you should feel bad. The author simply says that the characteristics and unreliability of LLMs make them unfit to be implemented in the Vivaldi browser at this moment. They even close off the article with a positive sentiment about the future of the ML field. They don't burn any bridges there.
  - stavros 2y ago
    This doesn't sound biased to you?: > While they do this, they also use vast amounts of energy and are happy using all the GPUs you can throw at them which is a problem we’ve seen before in the field of cryptocurrencies.
    - pprotas 2y ago
      This is written in a way that makes it clear that the author does not like the energy usage aspects of LLMs. But is he wrong?
      - stavros 2y ago
        Yes. Cars use more energy than LLMs, we don't mind those. What does "a lot of energy" even mean? It's meaningless. Do they use too much energy for their usefulness? If they did, people wouldn't be using them.
        timeon 2y ago
        > we don't mind those. Like with LLMs, some of us do. But still there are places in the world where one is imprisoned without car. Which is not case with LLMs (yet).
        minasmorath 2y ago
        Really hit the false equivalence nail on the head. Cars enable long-distance travel, which in many parts of the world is now essential for survival, and often that is, ironically, a result of climate change. LLMs do nothing to aid human survival. In a post-apocalyptic world, cars would be sought after for both transport and shelter, but nobody would give a care that we lost ChatGPT.
        nunez 2y ago
        I'm not sure if cars use more energy than LLMs; huge "citation needed" there. But for the sake of argument, let's assume that they do. Cars use more energy than LLMs because most of the world is built around requiring a car to get to places. It's not that we don't mind it; quite the contrary, in fact, as we're always reminded of when the price of gas/petrol shoots upwards. When the cost of living forces you to live 45 minutes away from your job by car because living within walking distance is astronomical, many folks are conditioned to want a house with a garage "for the kids" because apartments are "for the poor," and EVs, in their current state, are not financially feasible yet (though that is changing!), it's more that we're forced to tolerate it.
        stavros 2y ago
        That's about the cost of energy, not about the consumption. If you don't think the cost of gas is worth it, you don't use a car. If you don't think the cost of electricity is worth it, you don't use an LLM. It's literally priced in. I know people don't mind the cost relative to the value they're getting, because if they did, they wouldn't use LLMs.
    - maniflames 2y ago
      Not sure if it’s biased, it’s a serious limitation of the technology. Some countries are already struggling with their energy grid and water demands as is. I think it’s fair to ensure that you create something that isn’t subject to possible quotas in the future
    - rsynnott 2y ago
      ... But I mean this is the case. What do you mean by 'biased' here? Is it 'biased' to mention bad things about a thing? To be truly unbiased, must one praise everything while glossing over the problems?
  - KoolKat23 2y ago
    He went on a tangent about plagiarism, may as well disable the copy text feature in the browser.
    - WA 2y ago
      Copying isn't plagiarism. Copying and then publishing the same thing is plagiarism.
      - KoolKat23 2y ago
        Yes, I agree with you. The author made the point about LLM's facilitating plagiarism not me. My point is, if that is his argument, then copying is the same thing (which is ridiculous of course).
        plasticchris 2y ago
        The plagiarism argument is not necessarily directed at the user of the browser. Ask yourself who is doing the publishing? And how would you cite the output of an LLM if you did publish the output?
        KoolKat23 2y ago
        I could ask the same for the copy function, don't see how this would ever be an issue?
        freejazz 2y ago
        Typically I'd cite to whatever it was I copied. I've never seen any kind of writing that sourced to the copy function. Have you?
        KoolKat23 2y ago
        And you can cite the LLM you've used, no different to citing a quote by a person.
- minasmorath 2y ago
  I took it as more of a recognition of the downsides to LLM tech that the hype train tends to ignore, as well as the legal / moral / ethical gray areas that exist in both training those models and determining who is liable for what they output.
  - stavros 2y ago
    I don't know, this sounds weird: > While they do this, they also use vast amounts of energy and are happy using all the GPUs you can throw at them which is a problem we’ve seen before in the field of cryptocurrencies.
    - minasmorath 2y ago
      How is that weird? Current energy consumption levels for LLMs are definitely problematic. That's not to say they can't improve, but at the moment it's definitely bad. The estimate of ongoing power consumption for Google's AI summary feature, if it was made available for every search result, is roughly equivalent to the consumption level of the entire country of Ireland. That's not awesome given most of the world is not powered by renewable energy sources.
      - stavros 2y ago
        Don't look at what it says, look at how it's written: > While they do this, they also use vast amounts of energy and are happy using all the GPUs you can throw at them which is a problem we’ve seen before in the field of cryptocurrencies. "Vast amounts of energy", "happy using all the GPUs you can throw at them", and then the random cryptocurrency reference to evoke all the bad stuff associated with those.
        minasmorath 2y ago
        That's how a lot of folks write when they want to make a shorthand comparison and they trust their readers to understand what they're doing. The author is making a comparison of the current cost / benefit of LLM tech to the cost / benefit of Crypto. I don't necessarily agree with that comparison, but using an evocative writing style that can say quite a lot with very few words isn't a problem to me, especially given what this post is intended to convey. Edit: I do think you're making a fair observation, I just feel there are a few reasons not to draw too strong of a conclusion from it
- rubslopes 2y ago
  But they said: > Despite all this, we feel that the field on machine learning in general remains an exciting one and may lead to features that are actually useful. In the future, we hope that it will allow us to bring good privacy-respecting features to our users with a focus on improving discoverability and accesibility.
kachapopopow 2y ago
It's likely because people enjoy the benefits AI brings in their current form. I honestly cannot imagine my life now without gpt4/claude as it saves me hours writing shell scripts and transforming vaguely structured data. Edit: yes it does make mistakes, but it takes vastly shorter amount of time to find them rather than writing something from scratch.
- KronisLV 2y ago
  > Edit: yes it does make mistakes, but it takes vastly shorter amount of time to find them rather than writing something from scratch. To me, it feels like there will definitely be features or even entire products out there that wouldn’t exist without something that lowers the barrier of entry far enough for someone to overcome the zone of proximal development: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_proximal_development https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_proximal_development Just the other day I was able to introduce some custom ESLint rules into the project to make the import names match the filename (e.g. when someone renames a Vue component but the import names don’t change or you don’t notice those usages, so you end up with bunches of <OldComponent /> all over the place). I wouldn’t have had the time to do so without ChatGPT/GitHub Copilot nudging me in the right direction and giving me examples to work off of, because frankly my searches for about 15 minutes didn’t turn up anything either. Clearly that counts for something because nobody in any of my projects had done that previously, now it’s obvious that basically we need a local package added to the project (in package.js) but also that we can store it in the file system and just use the file: syntax. It was much the same story with some .cjs Node prebuild scripts that remind the developers that they should make examples of the new components they make in a development showcase page and so on. Aside from that, LLMs are useful for boilerplate stuff (hello, ASP.NET and Spring Boot), as well as simple one shots when you don’t want to rack your brain coming up with a particular RegEx, amongst other cases. If someone wants an LLM in the browser, good for them! If someone doesn’t want to add them to their browser project, that’s their rightful choice.
  - kachapopopow 2y ago
    I was trying to justify why people have a negative response to it.

stavros 2y ago

For me I think it's because the article appears biased. It's not just "we can't think of any problem it'd solve", it's "LLMs are bad and you should feel bad for liking them".

pprotas 2y ago
I don't really have that feeling. The author says that LLMs make stuff up and are often wrong about non-widely known facts. They present hallucinations in a confident way, which makes them come across as liars. This is true. That is exactly what the most popular LLMs do. They don't say that you should feel bad. The author simply says that the characteristics and unreliability of LLMs make them unfit to be implemented in the Vivaldi browser at this moment. They even close off the article with a positive sentiment about the future of the ML field. They don't burn any bridges there.
- stavros 2y ago
  This doesn't sound biased to you?: > While they do this, they also use vast amounts of energy and are happy using all the GPUs you can throw at them which is a problem we’ve seen before in the field of cryptocurrencies.
  - pprotas 2y ago
    This is written in a way that makes it clear that the author does not like the energy usage aspects of LLMs. But is he wrong?
    - stavros 2y ago
      Yes. Cars use more energy than LLMs, we don't mind those. What does "a lot of energy" even mean? It's meaningless. Do they use too much energy for their usefulness? If they did, people wouldn't be using them.
      - timeon 2y ago
        > we don't mind those. Like with LLMs, some of us do. But still there are places in the world where one is imprisoned without car. Which is not case with LLMs (yet).
        minasmorath 2y ago
        Really hit the false equivalence nail on the head. Cars enable long-distance travel, which in many parts of the world is now essential for survival, and often that is, ironically, a result of climate change. LLMs do nothing to aid human survival. In a post-apocalyptic world, cars would be sought after for both transport and shelter, but nobody would give a care that we lost ChatGPT.
      - nunez 2y ago
        I'm not sure if cars use more energy than LLMs; huge "citation needed" there. But for the sake of argument, let's assume that they do. Cars use more energy than LLMs because most of the world is built around requiring a car to get to places. It's not that we don't mind it; quite the contrary, in fact, as we're always reminded of when the price of gas/petrol shoots upwards. When the cost of living forces you to live 45 minutes away from your job by car because living within walking distance is astronomical, many folks are conditioned to want a house with a garage "for the kids" because apartments are "for the poor," and EVs, in their current state, are not financially feasible yet (though that is changing!), it's more that we're forced to tolerate it.
        stavros 2y ago
        That's about the cost of energy, not about the consumption. If you don't think the cost of gas is worth it, you don't use a car. If you don't think the cost of electricity is worth it, you don't use an LLM. It's literally priced in. I know people don't mind the cost relative to the value they're getting, because if they did, they wouldn't use LLMs.
  - maniflames 2y ago
    Not sure if it’s biased, it’s a serious limitation of the technology. Some countries are already struggling with their energy grid and water demands as is. I think it’s fair to ensure that you create something that isn’t subject to possible quotas in the future
  - rsynnott 2y ago
    ... But I mean this is the case. What do you mean by 'biased' here? Is it 'biased' to mention bad things about a thing? To be truly unbiased, must one praise everything while glossing over the problems?
- KoolKat23 2y ago
  He went on a tangent about plagiarism, may as well disable the copy text feature in the browser.
  - WA 2y ago
    Copying isn't plagiarism. Copying and then publishing the same thing is plagiarism.
    - KoolKat23 2y ago
      Yes, I agree with you. The author made the point about LLM's facilitating plagiarism not me. My point is, if that is his argument, then copying is the same thing (which is ridiculous of course).
      - plasticchris 2y ago
        The plagiarism argument is not necessarily directed at the user of the browser. Ask yourself who is doing the publishing? And how would you cite the output of an LLM if you did publish the output?
        KoolKat23 2y ago
        I could ask the same for the copy function, don't see how this would ever be an issue?
        freejazz 2y ago
        Typically I'd cite to whatever it was I copied. I've never seen any kind of writing that sourced to the copy function. Have you?
        KoolKat23 2y ago
        And you can cite the LLM you've used, no different to citing a quote by a person.
minasmorath 2y ago
I took it as more of a recognition of the downsides to LLM tech that the hype train tends to ignore, as well as the legal / moral / ethical gray areas that exist in both training those models and determining who is liable for what they output.
- stavros 2y ago
  I don't know, this sounds weird: > While they do this, they also use vast amounts of energy and are happy using all the GPUs you can throw at them which is a problem we’ve seen before in the field of cryptocurrencies.
  - minasmorath 2y ago
    How is that weird? Current energy consumption levels for LLMs are definitely problematic. That's not to say they can't improve, but at the moment it's definitely bad. The estimate of ongoing power consumption for Google's AI summary feature, if it was made available for every search result, is roughly equivalent to the consumption level of the entire country of Ireland. That's not awesome given most of the world is not powered by renewable energy sources.
    - stavros 2y ago
      Don't look at what it says, look at how it's written: > While they do this, they also use vast amounts of energy and are happy using all the GPUs you can throw at them which is a problem we’ve seen before in the field of cryptocurrencies. "Vast amounts of energy", "happy using all the GPUs you can throw at them", and then the random cryptocurrency reference to evoke all the bad stuff associated with those.
      - minasmorath 2y ago
        That's how a lot of folks write when they want to make a shorthand comparison and they trust their readers to understand what they're doing. The author is making a comparison of the current cost / benefit of LLM tech to the cost / benefit of Crypto. I don't necessarily agree with that comparison, but using an evocative writing style that can say quite a lot with very few words isn't a problem to me, especially given what this post is intended to convey. Edit: I do think you're making a fair observation, I just feel there are a few reasons not to draw too strong of a conclusion from it
rubslopes 2y ago
But they said: > Despite all this, we feel that the field on machine learning in general remains an exciting one and may lead to features that are actually useful. In the future, we hope that it will allow us to bring good privacy-respecting features to our users with a focus on improving discoverability and accesibility.

kachapopopow 2y ago

It's likely because people enjoy the benefits AI brings in their current form. I honestly cannot imagine my life now without gpt4/claude as it saves me hours writing shell scripts and transforming vaguely structured data. Edit: yes it does make mistakes, but it takes vastly shorter amount of time to find them rather than writing something from scratch.

KronisLV 2y ago
> Edit: yes it does make mistakes, but it takes vastly shorter amount of time to find them rather than writing something from scratch. To me, it feels like there will definitely be features or even entire products out there that wouldn’t exist without something that lowers the barrier of entry far enough for someone to overcome the zone of proximal development: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_proximal_development https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_proximal_development Just the other day I was able to introduce some custom ESLint rules into the project to make the import names match the filename (e.g. when someone renames a Vue component but the import names don’t change or you don’t notice those usages, so you end up with bunches of <OldComponent /> all over the place). I wouldn’t have had the time to do so without ChatGPT/GitHub Copilot nudging me in the right direction and giving me examples to work off of, because frankly my searches for about 15 minutes didn’t turn up anything either. Clearly that counts for something because nobody in any of my projects had done that previously, now it’s obvious that basically we need a local package added to the project (in package.js) but also that we can store it in the file system and just use the file: syntax. It was much the same story with some .cjs Node prebuild scripts that remind the developers that they should make examples of the new components they make in a development showcase page and so on. Aside from that, LLMs are useful for boilerplate stuff (hello, ASP.NET and Spring Boot), as well as simple one shots when you don’t want to rack your brain coming up with a particular RegEx, amongst other cases. If someone wants an LLM in the browser, good for them! If someone doesn’t want to add them to their browser project, that’s their rightful choice.
- kachapopopow 2y ago
  I was trying to justify why people have a negative response to it.