AI Controls (formerly 'kill switch') are landing in today's Firefox Nightly, and will land with Firefox 148 later this month.
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Stop portraying Mastodon users as the "anti-AI crazies".
Instead, ask yourself: "What is the relation between Mastodon users & Firefox?"
The answer:
An overwhelming number of Mastodon users used to be your champions.
They are tech people who used to recommend Firefox to the normies in their life. A crowd of mini-influencers, recommending your product.
And I don't understand why you go out of your way to alienate exactly these people.
@duke_of_germany @jonny @jaffathecake @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard since 20 years ago I've been switching my friends, family, and coworkers and classmates to firefox. Its depressing, but I no longer recommend firefox. Let's ditch the AI please.
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@paul well, if we created binaries for all combinations of the current 5 features, that would be 32x-ing the number of binaries per build. And I think people would still be unhappy depending on which was seen as the default.
The AI Controls give an easy way to have that granular control, and you don't need to switch binary just to try a feature.
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@paul well, if we created binaries for all combinations of the current 5 features, that would be 32x-ing the number of binaries per build. And I think people would still be unhappy depending on which was seen as the default.
The AI Controls give an easy way to have that granular control, and you don't need to switch binary just to try a feature.
Blink twice if you need help.
I don't feel you've really understood how we feel. But yes, some people may still be unhappy with the perceived default, but less people than right now. So long as we can have a browser than doesn't have the AI slop in it, most of us will be happy enough... though for some it is already too late and you're losing users who actually care.
Sure, we'll still be annoyed that Mozilla is piling its efforts into AI - but that's not going to change until it stops.32x more builds doesn't seem to much of an issue, I come from a time when that was normal. Especially if you start to get data back that shows these non-AI builds are actually quite popular.
But, I was only trying to give a fair opinion - I personally would prefer no AI at all, but I felt my first comment was fair to all sides. If you wish to stay on the "EAT THE AI, USER!!!" path then that's on you and I wish you well. Chase the "don't care" market, that'll do great I'm sure.
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@froztbyte I suppose that's literally true. But, I also think a mountain is made out of the molehill that is AI in Firefox. The vast majority of the dev time is on other things.
To be clear, I'm not someone who has personally found AI generally useful in browsers (aside from a couple of one-off automations), but my feelings aren't strong enough to deny those features to others.
@jaffathecake @froztbyte
To be clear. Making commercial chatbots available as first class citizen of the browser knowing their baggage in terms of ecological and social destruction is OK with you ?
Making non-authored, non-reviewed translations/summaries available as a first-class citizen of the browser doesn't even light an ethical warning ?These could be available to users *who want them* without being promoted on the level of a standard experience of the web browser, who's denied anything?
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Someone said to me this morning "people who don't like AI are much more vocal about it than those who like it or don't care"
Yep, and people who don't like genocide are much more vocal about it than those who like it or don't care.
Perhaps an extreme example, but ultimately those speaking up about it should be listened to. The "erm it's OK actually" wall with a glazed stare into the middle distance just doesn't work.
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@jaffathecake @froztbyte
To be clear. Making commercial chatbots available as first class citizen of the browser knowing their baggage in terms of ecological and social destruction is OK with you ?
Making non-authored, non-reviewed translations/summaries available as a first-class citizen of the browser doesn't even light an ethical warning ?These could be available to users *who want them* without being promoted on the level of a standard experience of the web browser, who's denied anything?
@ddelemeny @froztbyte I don't personally use the chatbot feature.
I do use translation, with full awareness that it's a machine translation, and I consider being able to read parts of the web that aren't in my native language a wonderful thing, and I'm glad it's done in a privacy-preserving way.
The models were downloaded when I asked for the translation to happen. They weren't there beforehand.
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@ddelemeny @froztbyte I don't personally use the chatbot feature.
I do use translation, with full awareness that it's a machine translation, and I consider being able to read parts of the web that aren't in my native language a wonderful thing, and I'm glad it's done in a privacy-preserving way.
The models were downloaded when I asked for the translation to happen. They weren't there beforehand.
@jaffathecake @froztbyte you aren't reading a part of the web. The translation was never on the web. Nobody had the opportunity to make sure it's right and nobody ever will. Ethics go farther than privacy.
I don't care if you personally don't use the chatbot feature. The existence of it in the default build will actively normalize and promote it to a userbase larger than the population of Brazil. Is social irresponsibility part of the manifesto here ?
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Stop portraying Mastodon users as the "anti-AI crazies".
Instead, ask yourself: "What is the relation between Mastodon users & Firefox?"
The answer:
An overwhelming number of Mastodon users used to be your champions.
They are tech people who used to recommend Firefox to the normies in their life. A crowd of mini-influencers, recommending your product.
And I don't understand why you go out of your way to alienate exactly these people.
@duke_of_germany @jonny @jaffathecake @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard
It is impossible to read this post without thinking of this recent article about Wikipedia’s internal strife and how communities become ossified and refuse to adapt to new conditions and then promptly die.
The organization version of progress advancing one funeral at a time
Is Wikipedia's Volunteer Model Facing a Generational Crisis?
The clash over AI-generated summaries reveals Wikipedia's challenge in adapting to younger audiences' media habits.
IEEE Spectrum (spectrum.ieee.org)
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@jaffathecake @froztbyte you aren't reading a part of the web. The translation was never on the web. Nobody had the opportunity to make sure it's right and nobody ever will. Ethics go farther than privacy.
I don't care if you personally don't use the chatbot feature. The existence of it in the default build will actively normalize and promote it to a userbase larger than the population of Brazil. Is social irresponsibility part of the manifesto here ?
@ddelemeny @froztbyte how do you feel about a11y tooling that analyses images to describe them? Therefore providing people with visibility into things they otherwise wouldn't have.
That also is generating content in a format that was never on the web. Nobody had the opportunity to make sure it's right and nobody ever will.
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Stop portraying Mastodon users as the "anti-AI crazies".
Instead, ask yourself: "What is the relation between Mastodon users & Firefox?"
The answer:
An overwhelming number of Mastodon users used to be your champions.
They are tech people who used to recommend Firefox to the normies in their life. A crowd of mini-influencers, recommending your product.
And I don't understand why you go out of your way to alienate exactly these people.
@duke_of_germany @jonny @jaffathecake @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard hi duke can you please give some context,i am new here in mastodon so i have no clue what are you talking about and beside that what do you recommend instead of firefox cause as far as i know google opera and brave all of them worse in many aspects
Edit:sorry duke i just saw his interesting comment about users here but i am still asking you if you have better recommendation -
@duke_of_germany @jonny @jaffathecake @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard
It is impossible to read this post without thinking of this recent article about Wikipedia’s internal strife and how communities become ossified and refuse to adapt to new conditions and then promptly die.
The organization version of progress advancing one funeral at a time
Is Wikipedia's Volunteer Model Facing a Generational Crisis?
The clash over AI-generated summaries reveals Wikipedia's challenge in adapting to younger audiences' media habits.
IEEE Spectrum (spectrum.ieee.org)
@jonathankoren @duke_of_germany @jonny @jaffathecake @firefoxwebdevs
> the volunteer community that built this encyclopedia has lately rejected a key innovation designed to serve readers
this article is AI shilling, nonsense and that should have been obvious at a glance
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@ddelemeny @froztbyte how do you feel about a11y tooling that analyses images to describe them? Therefore providing people with visibility into things they otherwise wouldn't have.
That also is generating content in a format that was never on the web. Nobody had the opportunity to make sure it's right and nobody ever will.
@jaffathecake @froztbyte exactly the same. You don't go around the ethical problem of the absence of authorship by invoking pathos (and borrowing legitimacy from disabled folks is morally sketchy to put it mildly).
Even more so as available technologies are far remote from being able to convey intent, context and nuance. This is misplaced half-baked solutionism.
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@jaffathecake @froztbyte exactly the same. You don't go around the ethical problem of the absence of authorship by invoking pathos (and borrowing legitimacy from disabled folks is morally sketchy to put it mildly).
Even more so as available technologies are far remote from being able to convey intent, context and nuance. This is misplaced half-baked solutionism.
@ddelemeny @froztbyte ok, then we simply disagree.
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@sotolf @barubary @jaffathecake @duke_of_germany @firefoxwebdevs it is literally Jake's job to be like this
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@jonathankoren @duke_of_germany @jonny @jaffathecake @firefoxwebdevs
> the volunteer community that built this encyclopedia has lately rejected a key innovation designed to serve readers
this article is AI shilling, nonsense and that should have been obvious at a glance
@davidgerard @duke_of_germany @jonny @jaffathecake @firefoxwebdevs Is “shilling” what the kids call “an opinion that makes me uncomfortable because it doesn’t comport to my preëxisting beliefs”?
This type of stimulus-response behavior is really beneath you.
You could have stopped to think about how organizations actually adapt without buying into the billionaire hype, but instead it’s just banging rocks together and grunting
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@ddelemeny @froztbyte how do you feel about a11y tooling that analyses images to describe them? Therefore providing people with visibility into things they otherwise wouldn't have.
That also is generating content in a format that was never on the web. Nobody had the opportunity to make sure it's right and nobody ever will.
@jaffathecake @ddelemeny I’ve seen a number of accessibility-using people critique this stuff, fwiw. A number of them echo the “let me choose my own”
For my own part: given the error rate problem combined with the (presumably) reduced capacity for the affected user to verify veracity/accuracy, I think it’s *even more* dangerous when this stuff hallucinates or miscategorizes
I agree the *idea* is nice, but do not believe that this implementation/generation has solved the problem
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AI Controls (formerly 'kill switch') are landing in today's Firefox Nightly, and will land with Firefox 148 later this month.
For the full details, see the Firefox blog https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai-controls/
@firefoxwebdevs It's good that you are bucking the trend and even putting controls in at all, but AI features are such that they absolutely require informed consent
Which means default off
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@firefoxwebdevs@mastodon.social
Not the same thing #Firefox devs: I cannot do a video call without the microphone on, but I can totally open a new tab without #AI assistance!
So the first permission is required to serve my request, the second is just you advertizing a feature you want people to use.
@alextecplayz@techhub.social@giacomo @alextecplayz none of the current AI features are involved in opening a new tab.
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@firefoxwebdevs It's good that you are bucking the trend and even putting controls in at all, but AI features are such that they absolutely require informed consent
Which means default off
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@froztbyte @barubary user research has been carried out, so repeating it doesn't seem necessary at this stage. I've been asking if there are details I can share publicly, but I haven't heard back.
@jaffathecake @froztbyte @barubary If you can't share your data and methods, I give that even less credence than an informal and biased poll question on a social network. Much like cigarette industry research was shared or not shared based on whether results would have helped or harmed the business model, my default presumption is that user sentiment data will be not shared because executive fiat has already mandated work counter to user desires. "No AI" is already a non-option.
