By now you've all probably heard about the latest shenanigans from Google and their love for in-browser AI features (if you don't, this is the story: https://www.theverge.com/tech/924933/google-chrome-4gb-gemini-nano-ai-features).
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@dalias @lazza @Vivaldi okay - bit harsh, I do not _like_ the fact that AI technology exists in the form that it is today, yknow, i'm a software developer who got laid off and is actively struggling to find work, in large part due to proliferation of LLM code generation tools - so even I was a lot more receptive to AI technology, I'd still think it'd be hard to be a "slop apologist", but my view is that the cat is out of the bag. This technology _WILL_ continue to be developed, and yes, we SHOULD fight those who seek to do the "permanent underclass" bullshit, I think that's a no brainer, and I don't disagree that given the pushback we are seeing a welcome pull away from AI technologies, I think it is nothing more than wishful thinking to expect that we will see a complete wipeout of LLM usage
@tay @dalias @lazza @Vivaldi just no.
This is a dead-end technology with no future.
We have known this for over a decade. It used to be called 'expert systems' and similar. Go look up IBM Watson. And that was done by far smarter people, manually training a targeted dataset with people who were experts in the field.It is not a technology. It is a waste of resources to do a bad implementation of a chatbot from the 1970's so a bunch of sociopathic techbros can siphon money for themselves.
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By now you've all probably heard about the latest shenanigans from Google and their love for in-browser AI features (if you don't, this is the story: https://www.theverge.com/tech/924933/google-chrome-4gb-gemini-nano-ai-features).
Our team has been inspecting the Chromium code and disabling stuff from the very first version of Vivaldi (we have some posts about this in our blog, such as https://vivaldi.com/blog/news/alert-no-google-topics-in-vivaldi/ or https://vivaldi.com/blog/no-google-vivaldi-users-will-not-get-floced/).
We've also been very outspoken about our dislike of the built-in AI trend in the browser industry, but in case there's still any doubts: yes, we disable all Gemini-related features, and we've been doing it for a while.
@Vivaldi I never thought id see the day where I'm glad that a developer ISNT adding features lmao
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By now you've all probably heard about the latest shenanigans from Google and their love for in-browser AI features (if you don't, this is the story: https://www.theverge.com/tech/924933/google-chrome-4gb-gemini-nano-ai-features).
Our team has been inspecting the Chromium code and disabling stuff from the very first version of Vivaldi (we have some posts about this in our blog, such as https://vivaldi.com/blog/news/alert-no-google-topics-in-vivaldi/ or https://vivaldi.com/blog/no-google-vivaldi-users-will-not-get-floced/).
We've also been very outspoken about our dislike of the built-in AI trend in the browser industry, but in case there's still any doubts: yes, we disable all Gemini-related features, and we've been doing it for a while.
@Vivaldi I'd long ago quit using Chrome, had installed several other options, and moved entirely to Firefox a while ago, but their gradual moves to include AI have soured me on them as well. I did download Vivaldi, Brave, and some others, LibreWolf included. I do not trust anything google any longer. Not that Vivaldi has anything to do with them, but I'm hedging my bets by removing anything Chromium from my system. Even IF Linux is far safer than other OS's. We've had RI in FOSS for ages.
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@Vivaldi will you consider making it optional rather than fully removing it? Like an opt-in feature?
I know Vivaldi is very friendly when it comes to user choice.
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but...
why would you ever want something like this?
fuck the AI cruft. i can't understand opt-in/ opt-out as an argument
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@dalias @lazza @Vivaldi well, i think the reason it's in the browser itself is because a) these files are, as mentioned, massive, so you don't want to have each site store their own, and b) i don't know if the WebGPU APIs are there yet for doing LLM inference at comparable speed
i'm not opposed to the APIs in principle - LLM technology is simply not going away, and there are actually decent use cases for them, and I oppose the current status quo of just shipping it all to OpenAI or Anthropic's cloud server
My biggest concern is that no two LLM models will ever behave in the same way as each other, so sites & users that expect Google's Gemini model, wouldn't have the same experience as if say Safari had this with one of their on device models. And maybe by some pure miracle we could convince all the implementations to standardise on one model (not happening) - you can't ever update that model as newer ones are developed without breaking those expectations (also why the extension model wouldn't really work)
@tay I'm not interested in using it and therefore it has no place on my system. I don't care if websites might want to use it in the future. I didn't consent to that and disagree that it wouldn't be better for each website to store their own; there are, after all, many more users than there are websites.
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@tay @lazza @Vivaldi Surely there will be some people who use it. We can't eliminate them. But there is absolutely no place for it in our browsers, in software we use, etc. much less giving websites we visit backdoors to our data and interactions via some "AI API".
Once the bubble finishes imploding (it's well along the way already), there will not be new gigantic models. The astronomical costs don't justify it. They don't even justify continuing to offer the existing ones at affordable prices. The existing public models you can run client-side will of course still exist but will be increastingly outdated. This will not be a complete wipe-out, but it will be close.
> much less giving websites we visit backdoors to our data and interactions via some "AI API".
I'm not entirely up to date on the Chrome AI APIs, but I was under the impression it's just stuff like a translation API, text summarisation, etc. If there is actually stuff that can leak information like such, I agree that is a genuine concern
And regarding the implosion and lack of future development, good. I sincerely hope that happens sooner rather than later. But I feel that while we are still in the VC money burning phase, we should encourage development of on device models to redirect resources away from cloud models, so that, when the funding dries up, we will have something we can use on our own terms, just so we would have SOMETHING to come out of the VC funded wrecking ball instead of just the destruction
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By now you've all probably heard about the latest shenanigans from Google and their love for in-browser AI features (if you don't, this is the story: https://www.theverge.com/tech/924933/google-chrome-4gb-gemini-nano-ai-features).
Our team has been inspecting the Chromium code and disabling stuff from the very first version of Vivaldi (we have some posts about this in our blog, such as https://vivaldi.com/blog/news/alert-no-google-topics-in-vivaldi/ or https://vivaldi.com/blog/no-google-vivaldi-users-will-not-get-floced/).
We've also been very outspoken about our dislike of the built-in AI trend in the browser industry, but in case there's still any doubts: yes, we disable all Gemini-related features, and we've been doing it for a while.
@Vivaldi I would not call it „Feature“.
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> much less giving websites we visit backdoors to our data and interactions via some "AI API".
I'm not entirely up to date on the Chrome AI APIs, but I was under the impression it's just stuff like a translation API, text summarisation, etc. If there is actually stuff that can leak information like such, I agree that is a genuine concern
And regarding the implosion and lack of future development, good. I sincerely hope that happens sooner rather than later. But I feel that while we are still in the VC money burning phase, we should encourage development of on device models to redirect resources away from cloud models, so that, when the funding dries up, we will have something we can use on our own terms, just so we would have SOMETHING to come out of the VC funded wrecking ball instead of just the destruction
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@tay Regarding the second part, we DON'T WANT "something we can use on our own terms" from "AI". There is nothing useful to be had here. It's all malicious, every last bit of it. The only thing "high quality" local models would enable is massive automated spam, scam, and deception/disinformation campaigns without the perpetrators having to pay for it.
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@tay Regarding the second part, we DON'T WANT "something we can use on our own terms" from "AI". There is nothing useful to be had here. It's all malicious, every last bit of it. The only thing "high quality" local models would enable is massive automated spam, scam, and deception/disinformation campaigns without the perpetrators having to pay for it.
@tay We specifically WANT these awful things to depend on the subsidized massive data centers, so that when the bills come due and it all crashes, as much as possible is GONE.
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@Vivaldi will you consider making it optional rather than fully removing it? Like an opt-in feature?
I know Vivaldi is very friendly when it comes to user choice.
@lazza Can't see why they would when they're opposed to integrating any form of LLM into the browser, they are friendly but they're not about to renegotiate on their principles either.
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@lazza @kimcrawley What do you expect when you show up in someone's mentions advocating for the "AI" industry's interests?
@dalias well, if I did that, maybe... but given that I didn't, the point is freaking moot.
I asked Vivaldi what they plan to do about users' choice. Given that Vivaldi is one of the most customizable browser in the world, that is a very valid question.
Anyway, it's always funny to see how anti-AI zealots get triggered. More or less the same as far-right extremists when we try to explain to them that immigrants and LGBT individuals are people, too.
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@dalias well, if I did that, maybe... but given that I didn't, the point is freaking moot.
I asked Vivaldi what they plan to do about users' choice. Given that Vivaldi is one of the most customizable browser in the world, that is a very valid question.
Anyway, it's always funny to see how anti-AI zealots get triggered. More or less the same as far-right extremists when we try to explain to them that immigrants and LGBT individuals are people, too.
@lazza Wow, showing your true colors...
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By now you've all probably heard about the latest shenanigans from Google and their love for in-browser AI features (if you don't, this is the story: https://www.theverge.com/tech/924933/google-chrome-4gb-gemini-nano-ai-features).
Our team has been inspecting the Chromium code and disabling stuff from the very first version of Vivaldi (we have some posts about this in our blog, such as https://vivaldi.com/blog/news/alert-no-google-topics-in-vivaldi/ or https://vivaldi.com/blog/no-google-vivaldi-users-will-not-get-floced/).
We've also been very outspoken about our dislike of the built-in AI trend in the browser industry, but in case there's still any doubts: yes, we disable all Gemini-related features, and we've been doing it for a while.
@Vivaldi Thank you.
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@tay Regarding the second part, we DON'T WANT "something we can use on our own terms" from "AI". There is nothing useful to be had here. It's all malicious, every last bit of it. The only thing "high quality" local models would enable is massive automated spam, scam, and deception/disinformation campaigns without the perpetrators having to pay for it.
@dalias I mean, I feel like we're past that point, so unless you EMP every hard drive with a .GGUF file on it, we will continue to see slop articles clogging up search results. Which is deeply frustrating but, given that I've found _some_ use from LLMs (admittedly not much, and wouldn't complain too much if they did all just vanish), I would like to keep those on my own terms
But anyway, I think I've said as much as I care to for now, I thank you for being at least willing to hear what I have to say, but in all honesty I am overdue for some rest, and wouldn't mind doing something more productive. Maybe I could update musl et al on all my systems, I'm sure my horrible patching hygiene isn't doing your good work justice.
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@Vivaldi I’d like to be able to hide the AI summary on Google’s search results page. This feature is very inaccurate and often gets things wrong. Plus, there’s no option to turn it off. It forces the summary onto users who don’t want it and wastes electricity.
@kyu3a unfortunately that's because you visit google.com. If you don't visit google.com this wouldn't be a problem.
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By now you've all probably heard about the latest shenanigans from Google and their love for in-browser AI features (if you don't, this is the story: https://www.theverge.com/tech/924933/google-chrome-4gb-gemini-nano-ai-features).
Our team has been inspecting the Chromium code and disabling stuff from the very first version of Vivaldi (we have some posts about this in our blog, such as https://vivaldi.com/blog/news/alert-no-google-topics-in-vivaldi/ or https://vivaldi.com/blog/no-google-vivaldi-users-will-not-get-floced/).
We've also been very outspoken about our dislike of the built-in AI trend in the browser industry, but in case there's still any doubts: yes, we disable all Gemini-related features, and we've been doing it for a while.
@Vivaldi I went ahead an updated the flags suggested in the news articles, anyway. An extra bit of guard never hurt!
