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Fully disagree. I use zero so-called "AI" features in my day to day life. None. Not one. Why do I need them in my browser, and why does my browser need to focus

Fully disagree. I use zero so-called "AI" features in my day to day life. None. Not one. Why do I need them in my browser, and why does my browser need to focus on something that, several years into the hype wave, I still *do not use at all*? And it's not for a lack of trying, the results are just not what I need or want, and traditional browsing (and search engines, etc.) does do what I want. I'd be elated if Firefox solely focused on "the pre-AI era", as you put it, and many other power users would, too. And I somehow doubt my non-techie family cares - if anything, they're tired of seeing the stupid sparkle icons crammed down their throats at every single corner of the world now.

wvenable 9mo ago
> I use zero so-called "AI" features in my day to day life. None. Not one. I know so many people who made that same argument, if you can call it that, about smartphones. I recently listened to a podcast (probably The Verge) talking about how an author was suddenly getting more purchases from his personal website. He attributed it to AI chatbots giving his personal website as the best place to buy rather than Amazon, etc. An AI browser might be a way to take power away from all the big players. > And it's not for a lack of trying, the results are just not what I need or want, and traditional browsing (and search engines, etc.) does do what I want. I suspect I only Google for about 1/4 of things I used to (maybe less). Why search, wade through dubious results, etc when you can just instantly get the result you want in the format you want it? While I am a techie and I do use Firefox -- that's not a growing niche. I think AI will become spectacularly better for non-techies because it can simply give them what they ask for. LLMs have solved the natural language query issue.
- entropy47 9mo ago
  > Why ... wade through dubious results, etc when you can just instantly get the result you want in the format you want it? Funnily enough, this is exactly how I justify Googling stuff instead of asking Gemini. Different strokes I guess!
- entropy47 9mo ago
  > I know so many people who made that same argument, if you can call it that, about smartphones. Sure, but people also told me I'd be using crypto for everything now and (at least for me) it has faded into total obscurity. The biggest difference for me is that nobody (the companies making things, the companies I worked for...) had to jam smartphones down my throat. It made my life better so I went out of my way to use it. If you took it away, I would be sad. I haven't had that moment yet for any AI product / feature.
  - wvenable 9mo ago
    Any AI product I pay for is great. Any AI product I don't pay for is terrible.
    - pjc50 9mo ago
      > Any AI product I pay for is great. Any AI product I don't pay for is terrible. This doesn't sound like the "free sample" model is working then? If I try the free version of product X and it's terrible, that will discourage me from ever trying the paid version.
      - wvenable 9mo ago
        I think half the people who think AI is incredibly dumb and can't understand why anyone is using it is because they're using the free samples. This whole thing is so horribly expensive that they lose money even on people who pay therefore the free samples are necessarily as minimal as they can get away with. The free samples worked famously initially to get people to try it initially, though. But whenever that free Gemini text pops up in my search, I know why people think it's stupid. But that's not the experience I have with paid options.
- happymellon 9mo ago
  > > I use zero so-called "AI" features in my day to day life. None. Not one. > I know so many people who made that same argument, if you can call it that, about smartphones. I had to use a ledger database at work for audit trails because they were hotness. I think we were one of the few that actually used AWS QLDB. The experience I've had with people submitting AI generated code has been poor. Poor performing code, poor quality code using deprecated methods and overly complex functionality, and then poor understanding of why the various models chose to do it that way. I've not actually seen a selling point for me, and "because Google is enshittifying its searches" is pretty weak.
  - wvenable 9mo ago
    I've been posting recently how I refactored a few different code bases with the help of AI. Faster code, higher quality code, overall smaller. AI is not a hammer, it's a Lathe: incredibly powerful but only if you understand exactly what you're doing otherwise it will happily make a big mess.
    - happymellon 9mo ago
      > Faster code, higher quality code, overall smaller. I'll have to take your word for it, I have yet to see a PR that used AI that wasn't slop. > AI is not a hammer, it's a Lathe I would liken it more to dynamite.
      - wvenable 9mo ago
        > I'll have to take your word for it, I have yet to see a PR that used AI that wasn't slop. How would you know a non-slop PR didn't use AI? Why would I accept slop out of the AI? I don't. So I don't have any. I don't understand the disconnect here. Some people really want to be extremely negative about this pretty amazing technology while the rest of us have just incorporated it into our workflow.
        happymellon 9mo ago
        > How would you know a non-slop PR didn't use AI? I don't, hence why I have to take your word for it. The PRs that people have submitted where they either told me up front or admitted to using AI after the review probed as to why they would be inconsistent in their library usage were not good and required substantial rework. Yes, some people may submit PRs that used AI and were good. But if so, they haven't told me but I would have hoped that people advocating it would have either told me or got me to review, said it is good, and then told me it was a test and the AI passed. So far that hasn't happened, so I'm not convinced it's a regular occurrence.
- eCa 9mo ago
  > Why search, wade through dubious results, etc when you can just instantly get the result you want in the format you want it? For one, that way you can see that the source is dubious. Gemini gives it to you cleaned. And then you still have to dig through the sources to confirm that what it gave you is correct and not halucinated.
zwnow 9mo ago
I agree, why support pushing the masses into another big tech machinery that just rips off their data and collectively makes it worse for all of us again? We are already way too cool with people frying their brains on X, TikTok, Instagram and whatnot. If anything, as devs, we should help people get back to focus on their own lifes over monetization of attentionspans. But this industry has no backbone and is constantly letting people down for a quick buck.
Spacecosmonaut 9mo ago
AI tools are here to stay. They will start to creep into everything, everywhere, all the time. Either you recognize the moment at which it becomes a significant disadvantage not to use them (I agree that moment is not now), or get left behind.
- runarberg 9mo ago
  AI crap has already been crammed into everything for months now, and nobody like it nor wants it. There is no proof that AI will continue to improve and no certainty that it will become a disadvantage not to use them. In fact, we are seeing the improvements slow down and it looks like the model will plateau sooner rather then later.
  - ben_w 9mo ago
    > There is no proof that AI will continue to improve and no certainty that it will become a disadvantage not to use them. In fact, we are seeing the improvements slow down and it looks like the model will plateau sooner rather then later. While I expect the improvements to slow down and stop, due to the money running out, there's definitely evidence that the models can keep improving until that point. "Sooner or later", given the trend lines, is sill enough to do to SWEng what Wikipedia did to Encyclopædia Britannica: Still exists, but utterly changed.
    - msla 9mo ago
      > While I expect the improvements to slow down and stop, due to the money running out This will certainly happen with the models that use weird proprietary licenses, which people only contribute to if they're being paid, but open ones can continue beyond that point.
      - ben_w 9mo ago
        The hyperscalers are buying enough compute and energy to distort the market, enough money thrown at them to distort the US economy. Open models, even if 100% of internet users joined an AI@HOME kind of project, don't have enough resources to do that.
PurpleRamen 9mo ago
There are many features you are not using in all your software. Just being there, should not be a problem for people. You should evaluate a software by what it's giving you, and which harm it brings, not by what it's giving others you do not care about. And so far, we can assume that AI in Firefox will be like all the other stuff people don't care about, just optional, a button here, a menu-entry there, just waiting for interaction, but not harmful.
chickenimprint 9mo ago
You never translate any websites?

wvenable 9mo ago

> I use zero so-called "AI" features in my day to day life. None. Not one. I know so many people who made that same argument, if you can call it that, about smartphones. I recently listened to a podcast (probably The Verge) talking about how an author was suddenly getting more purchases from his personal website. He attributed it to AI chatbots giving his personal website as the best place to buy rather than Amazon, etc. An AI browser might be a way to take power away from all the big players. > And it's not for a lack of trying, the results are just not what I need or want, and traditional browsing (and search engines, etc.) does do what I want. I suspect I only Google for about 1/4 of things I used to (maybe less). Why search, wade through dubious results, etc when you can just instantly get the result you want in the format you want it? While I am a techie and I do use Firefox -- that's not a growing niche. I think AI will become spectacularly better for non-techies because it can simply give them what they ask for. LLMs have solved the natural language query issue.

entropy47 9mo ago
> Why ... wade through dubious results, etc when you can just instantly get the result you want in the format you want it? Funnily enough, this is exactly how I justify Googling stuff instead of asking Gemini. Different strokes I guess!
entropy47 9mo ago
> I know so many people who made that same argument, if you can call it that, about smartphones. Sure, but people also told me I'd be using crypto for everything now and (at least for me) it has faded into total obscurity. The biggest difference for me is that nobody (the companies making things, the companies I worked for...) had to jam smartphones down my throat. It made my life better so I went out of my way to use it. If you took it away, I would be sad. I haven't had that moment yet for any AI product / feature.
- wvenable 9mo ago
  Any AI product I pay for is great. Any AI product I don't pay for is terrible.
  - pjc50 9mo ago
    > Any AI product I pay for is great. Any AI product I don't pay for is terrible. This doesn't sound like the "free sample" model is working then? If I try the free version of product X and it's terrible, that will discourage me from ever trying the paid version.
    - wvenable 9mo ago
      I think half the people who think AI is incredibly dumb and can't understand why anyone is using it is because they're using the free samples. This whole thing is so horribly expensive that they lose money even on people who pay therefore the free samples are necessarily as minimal as they can get away with. The free samples worked famously initially to get people to try it initially, though. But whenever that free Gemini text pops up in my search, I know why people think it's stupid. But that's not the experience I have with paid options.
happymellon 9mo ago
> > I use zero so-called "AI" features in my day to day life. None. Not one. > I know so many people who made that same argument, if you can call it that, about smartphones. I had to use a ledger database at work for audit trails because they were hotness. I think we were one of the few that actually used AWS QLDB. The experience I've had with people submitting AI generated code has been poor. Poor performing code, poor quality code using deprecated methods and overly complex functionality, and then poor understanding of why the various models chose to do it that way. I've not actually seen a selling point for me, and "because Google is enshittifying its searches" is pretty weak.
- wvenable 9mo ago
  I've been posting recently how I refactored a few different code bases with the help of AI. Faster code, higher quality code, overall smaller. AI is not a hammer, it's a Lathe: incredibly powerful but only if you understand exactly what you're doing otherwise it will happily make a big mess.
  - happymellon 9mo ago
    > Faster code, higher quality code, overall smaller. I'll have to take your word for it, I have yet to see a PR that used AI that wasn't slop. > AI is not a hammer, it's a Lathe I would liken it more to dynamite.
    - wvenable 9mo ago
      > I'll have to take your word for it, I have yet to see a PR that used AI that wasn't slop. How would you know a non-slop PR didn't use AI? Why would I accept slop out of the AI? I don't. So I don't have any. I don't understand the disconnect here. Some people really want to be extremely negative about this pretty amazing technology while the rest of us have just incorporated it into our workflow.
      - happymellon 9mo ago
        > How would you know a non-slop PR didn't use AI? I don't, hence why I have to take your word for it. The PRs that people have submitted where they either told me up front or admitted to using AI after the review probed as to why they would be inconsistent in their library usage were not good and required substantial rework. Yes, some people may submit PRs that used AI and were good. But if so, they haven't told me but I would have hoped that people advocating it would have either told me or got me to review, said it is good, and then told me it was a test and the AI passed. So far that hasn't happened, so I'm not convinced it's a regular occurrence.
eCa 9mo ago
> Why search, wade through dubious results, etc when you can just instantly get the result you want in the format you want it? For one, that way you can see that the source is dubious. Gemini gives it to you cleaned. And then you still have to dig through the sources to confirm that what it gave you is correct and not halucinated.

zwnow 9mo ago

I agree, why support pushing the masses into another big tech machinery that just rips off their data and collectively makes it worse for all of us again? We are already way too cool with people frying their brains on X, TikTok, Instagram and whatnot. If anything, as devs, we should help people get back to focus on their own lifes over monetization of attentionspans. But this industry has no backbone and is constantly letting people down for a quick buck.

Spacecosmonaut 9mo ago

AI tools are here to stay. They will start to creep into everything, everywhere, all the time. Either you recognize the moment at which it becomes a significant disadvantage not to use them (I agree that moment is not now), or get left behind.

runarberg 9mo ago
AI crap has already been crammed into everything for months now, and nobody like it nor wants it. There is no proof that AI will continue to improve and no certainty that it will become a disadvantage not to use them. In fact, we are seeing the improvements slow down and it looks like the model will plateau sooner rather then later.
- ben_w 9mo ago
  > There is no proof that AI will continue to improve and no certainty that it will become a disadvantage not to use them. In fact, we are seeing the improvements slow down and it looks like the model will plateau sooner rather then later. While I expect the improvements to slow down and stop, due to the money running out, there's definitely evidence that the models can keep improving until that point. "Sooner or later", given the trend lines, is sill enough to do to SWEng what Wikipedia did to Encyclopædia Britannica: Still exists, but utterly changed.
  - msla 9mo ago
    > While I expect the improvements to slow down and stop, due to the money running out This will certainly happen with the models that use weird proprietary licenses, which people only contribute to if they're being paid, but open ones can continue beyond that point.
    - ben_w 9mo ago
      The hyperscalers are buying enough compute and energy to distort the market, enough money thrown at them to distort the US economy. Open models, even if 100% of internet users joined an AI@HOME kind of project, don't have enough resources to do that.

PurpleRamen 9mo ago

There are many features you are not using in all your software. Just being there, should not be a problem for people. You should evaluate a software by what it's giving you, and which harm it brings, not by what it's giving others you do not care about. And so far, we can assume that AI in Firefox will be like all the other stuff people don't care about, just optional, a button here, a menu-entry there, just waiting for interaction, but not harmful.

chickenimprint 9mo ago

You never translate any websites?