Firefox uses on-device downloaded-on-demand ML models for privacy-preserving translation.
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@mcc @firefoxwebdevs It is a shame that we’ve come to having to ban the use of some tools.
I used an unfortunate word choice, despite an apropos meaning in this context: an idiot is an utterly foolish or senseless person. Programmers should know how to properly use the tools they have. That’s why I’m not all against AI codegen. In the right hands, a tool can create something beautiful and useful. In foolish hands, it can damage.
Learn your craft first. Then use tools properly to enhance it.
@mdavis @mcc @firefoxwebdevs Yeah dude you just need to learn woodworking by hand first and then you too can just have termites make your cuts.
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@firefoxwebdevs @mdavis small clarification
@firefoxwebdevs introduced the concept of an "AI kill switch"
the "AI kill switch purists" you're talking about don't exist.
No serious person would think this is a good idea because it doesn't make sense. Evident by this "design" stumble at the start line
@fasterandworse @firefoxwebdevs @mdavis it is less likely to be a stumble and more likely introduced in bad faith by a PM to derail the process
Btw, there's meaningful discussion to be had about the biases encoded in ML-based translation -- try translating "the scientist" and "the teacher" into a language with gendered nouns. But that is separate from the widespread opposition to LLMs and everyone knows it.
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@mdavis @firefoxwebdevs Well, if LLMs are a tool you use as part of your process of writing code, then I don't want to use any code you created
@mcc @firefoxwebdevs It is going to be very difficult to avoid any application being built today that doesn’t have some part of it “infected” by AI.
There are degrees of “codegen” as well… to what extent do you employ it? A scaffolded loop, autocompleted function call that gets the order of the parameters right?
Or draft out and deploy an entire application?
I think we have to be realistic about it but also call out the fools who are misusing it or thinking it makes them a real programmer.
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@firefoxwebdevs The frame of this question is risible.
I am begging you to just make a web browser.
Make it the best browser for the open web. Make it a browser that empowers individuals. Make it a browser that defends users against threats.
Do not make a search engine. Do not make a translation engine. Do not make a webpage summariser. Do not make a front-end for an LLM. Do not make a client-side LLM.
Just. Make. A. Web. Browser.
Please.
@m0rpk @firefoxwebdevs you have it completely backwards, AI should be opt in not opt out
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@firefoxwebdevs as a user, I like and use translation. Having one app render and translate content makes sense to me.
I like how you do it (incl on-device, on-demand and privacy-preserving, and open data (assuming it means not copyrighted?)).
Because of both, it is clearly different from other “AI” to me, even if it technically would use language models that are large, and this poll makes sense to me.
It's tricky, I voted, but wasn't super sure. I think granular controls would be great.
@firefoxwebdevs I also like the idea of having all such features as extensions rather than built in features, so they can be explicitly turned on by people who want to.
Would really make the product clearly stand out from others
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@cassidy @firefoxwebdevs The term "AI" has existed since 1956 so of course it's going to have a very broad definition.
Things don't just stop being "AI" when AI researchers invent newer "more AI" stuff.
@mage_of_dragons @cassidy @firefoxwebdevs Right, LLMs are unquestionably an AI technology, as are ML, neural nets, expert systems, and so on.
But your response misses the point. The complaint was:
Firefox users: We hate these new AI (implicitly: generative AI, LLM slop) features, please let us turn them off! (Ideally, stop wasting developer effort on them!)
Mozilla leadership: Oh, you mean you hate the AI (willfully misinterpreted to mean existing ML systems) translations?The compliant is not “It's incorrect to call LLMs AI”, the complaint is “You know perfectly well what we mean when we use "AI" in this context, stop disingenuously pretending you don't know what we're talking about”.
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@mdavis @mcc @firefoxwebdevs Yeah dude you just need to learn woodworking by hand first and then you too can just have termites make your cuts.
@fwaggle @mcc @firefoxwebdevs I like this.
There’s a joke here about bugs in code… -
Firefox uses on-device downloaded-on-demand ML models for privacy-preserving translation.
They're not LLMs. They're trained on open data.
Should translation be disabled if the AI 'kill switch' is active?
@firefoxwebdevs I'm trying to phrase this using as little expletives as possible: About 18 years, I installed Firefox because I needed a tool to look at webpages written in the hypertext markup language, transferred from their servers via the hypertext transfer protocol. That's arguably the only sensible usecase for an internet browser that we could come up with so far. Firefox was actually really good at that. It was fast. It worked decently well on my linux machine. Over the years it got even better. The extension system allowed for proper ad, script blockers and other privacy preserving add-ons.
On the that niche of "good browser" got emptier and until only Firefox remained. And for some bizarre reason the strategy right now is to meet itself out of that niche? Because it totally makes sense to devote resources to some GenAI gimmicks, to then devote even more resources to implement a "kill-switch" to disable them?
Firefox has one job and one job only: Download and display websites. I don't see many resources devoted to that these days. -
The Firefox AI "kill switch" is not "complicated" except insofar as it's incoherent. it's not "undisclosed nuance" except insofar as it's incoherent.
the "kill switch" doesn't exist.
this is important to keep in mind. once you remember that NONE OF THIS EXISTS, you will realise that every one of the dilemmas you posit is an imaginary problem that follows from incoherent postulates.
e.g. "AI kill switch purists" is not a coherent postulation because the "kill switch" does not exist.
the "kill switch" is a hypothetical proposed in this post:
https://mastodon.social/@firefoxwebdevs/115740500373677782
the "kill switch" is a proposal to satisfy the demand for an opt-in by providing an opt-out. you might think that's a failure to respect the question, and you might even begin to suspect the proposal was in bad faith.
note that Jake, in presenting the kill switch and calling it a kill switch and getting it into all the papers as a kill switch, says he's uncomfortable with the name he's publicised it as. you might think that's oddly incompetent for literally a PR (devrel) person.
the concept as presented imposes multiple false dilemmas.
the LLM stuff should *incredibly obviously* be an extension. this is the purest possible opt-in, despite jake's past attempts to muddy the meaning of "opt-in".
making it an extension is also eminently feasible. There is literally no technical reason it needs to be a browser built-in.
this suggests the reasons are not in any way technical. some person with a name, who has yet to be named, dictated that it would be a built-in. so that's what Mozilla is going with.
why Mozilla went hard AI is entirely unclear. this would have been late 2024? we have no idea who was inspired with this bad idea nor why they were so incredibly keen to force it into the browser.
nor is it clear what Mozilla will do for external LLM services when the AI bubble runs out of venture capital and pops in a year or so, most of the chatbot APIs shut down and whatever remains is 10x the cost at least. but that's a problem for 2027's bonus, not 2026's.
note how the poll provides no option for "no LLM functions built-in to Firefox", in a pathetically transparent attempt to synthesize consent. jake wants to use this poll as evidence of what the user base wants, deliberately leaving out the option he knows directly a lot of them want.
and in conclusion:
1. solve the "kill switch" naming problem by branding it the "brutal and bloody robot murder switch with an option on the executives responsible".
2. make all this shit an extension like they should have a year ago.
3. and your little translator too.@davidgerard @mdavis@mastodon.social @firefoxwebdevs “but wait just let me explain the AI kill switch”, Mozilla continues to insist, as they slowly expand and transform into an SBF
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Firefox uses on-device downloaded-on-demand ML models for privacy-preserving translation.
They're not LLMs. They're trained on open data.
Should translation be disabled if the AI 'kill switch' is active?
@firefoxwebdevs hi there. Thanks for asking, I've put my vote. Sorry you're taking so much in the face. I hope everything improves as soon as possible
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@firefoxwebdevs I'm trying to phrase this using as little expletives as possible: About 18 years, I installed Firefox because I needed a tool to look at webpages written in the hypertext markup language, transferred from their servers via the hypertext transfer protocol. That's arguably the only sensible usecase for an internet browser that we could come up with so far. Firefox was actually really good at that. It was fast. It worked decently well on my linux machine. Over the years it got even better. The extension system allowed for proper ad, script blockers and other privacy preserving add-ons.
On the that niche of "good browser" got emptier and until only Firefox remained. And for some bizarre reason the strategy right now is to meet itself out of that niche? Because it totally makes sense to devote resources to some GenAI gimmicks, to then devote even more resources to implement a "kill-switch" to disable them?
Firefox has one job and one job only: Download and display websites. I don't see many resources devoted to that these days.@firefoxwebdevs Also as a side note: The org I'm working on has banned genAI tools for projects above a certain level of confidentiality. Guess what? Firefox is banned as well and probably stays banned regardless of any kill switch.
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@davidgerard @mdavis@mastodon.social @firefoxwebdevs “but wait just let me explain the AI kill switch”, Mozilla continues to insist, as they slowly expand and transform into an SBF
@zzt @firefoxwebdevs this would involve them one day standing before Congress and solemnly declaring "I fucked up", which is why we had to jail them first.
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@firefoxwebdevs @zzt How about making a poll "Should Firefox include AI/LLM by default?"
@iceqbe @firefoxwebdevs @zzt Make that "Should Firefox include AI at all?"
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@fasterandworse @firefoxwebdevs @mdavis it is less likely to be a stumble and more likely introduced in bad faith by a PM to derail the process
Btw, there's meaningful discussion to be had about the biases encoded in ML-based translation -- try translating "the scientist" and "the teacher" into a language with gendered nouns. But that is separate from the widespread opposition to LLMs and everyone knows it.
@fasterandworse @firefoxwebdevs @mdavis (that being said I voted for "yes but let me turn it back on". That's what we want: a modular browser with granular settings. "Ha ha you can have translation but only if you want the rest of the AI" would be a dark pattern.)
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Firefox uses on-device downloaded-on-demand ML models for privacy-preserving translation.
They're not LLMs. They're trained on open data.
Should translation be disabled if the AI 'kill switch' is active?
@firefoxwebdevs irrelevant. Firefox was dead the moment you jumped the fraudulent llm train. Only idiots will use Firefox in the future. Go to hell, assholes!
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Firefox uses on-device downloaded-on-demand ML models for privacy-preserving translation.
They're not LLMs. They're trained on open data.
Should translation be disabled if the AI 'kill switch' is active?
@firefoxwebdevs@mastodon.social translation should be in an entirely separate extension, and not included in the base browser. same for the LLM garbage. get it out of my browser.
if you want, you can prompt me to install it. once. -
Why is Firefox even running this survey?
Because the people in charge genuinely believe that AI slop is The Future
and believe that, in order to stay relevant, Firefox must become an AI Browser.But somehow users inexplicably dislike AI slop?! How can this be?!
Embedding AI slop in Firefox as deeply and pervasively as possible is thus a critical goal. But this risks reputational damage with its actual users! To mitigate the risk, bundle features that were not controversial into the discussion of the controversial features; this serves to average the controversy across the (previously uncontroversial, existing) translation feature and highly controversial new slop features, hopefully reducing it below an ignorable threshold.
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@firefoxwebdevs But wait… what if the developers used AI to help develop the code in the browser itself? Does that mean AI kill switch purists should then rather not even use the product at all?
@mdavis@mastodon.social @firefoxwebdevs@mastodon.social this is correct. i would rather not use the product at all. i am actively rejecting the use of software that has a policy of accepting code generated by LLMs in favor of software that has a policy of rejecting that code.
i would much prefer Firefox not only to not have AI features, but not to include AI-generated code either. -
The Firefox AI "kill switch" is not "complicated" except insofar as it's incoherent. it's not "undisclosed nuance" except insofar as it's incoherent.
the "kill switch" doesn't exist.
this is important to keep in mind. once you remember that NONE OF THIS EXISTS, you will realise that every one of the dilemmas you posit is an imaginary problem that follows from incoherent postulates.
e.g. "AI kill switch purists" is not a coherent postulation because the "kill switch" does not exist.
the "kill switch" is a hypothetical proposed in this post:
https://mastodon.social/@firefoxwebdevs/115740500373677782
the "kill switch" is a proposal to satisfy the demand for an opt-in by providing an opt-out. you might think that's a failure to respect the question, and you might even begin to suspect the proposal was in bad faith.
note that Jake, in presenting the kill switch and calling it a kill switch and getting it into all the papers as a kill switch, says he's uncomfortable with the name he's publicised it as. you might think that's oddly incompetent for literally a PR (devrel) person.
the concept as presented imposes multiple false dilemmas.
the LLM stuff should *incredibly obviously* be an extension. this is the purest possible opt-in, despite jake's past attempts to muddy the meaning of "opt-in".
making it an extension is also eminently feasible. There is literally no technical reason it needs to be a browser built-in.
this suggests the reasons are not in any way technical. some person with a name, who has yet to be named, dictated that it would be a built-in. so that's what Mozilla is going with.
why Mozilla went hard AI is entirely unclear. this would have been late 2024? we have no idea who was inspired with this bad idea nor why they were so incredibly keen to force it into the browser.
nor is it clear what Mozilla will do for external LLM services when the AI bubble runs out of venture capital and pops in a year or so, most of the chatbot APIs shut down and whatever remains is 10x the cost at least. but that's a problem for 2027's bonus, not 2026's.
note how the poll provides no option for "no LLM functions built-in to Firefox", in a pathetically transparent attempt to synthesize consent. jake wants to use this poll as evidence of what the user base wants, deliberately leaving out the option he knows directly a lot of them want.
and in conclusion:
1. solve the "kill switch" naming problem by branding it the "brutal and bloody robot murder switch with an option on the executives responsible".
2. make all this shit an extension like they should have a year ago.
3. and your little translator too.@davidgerard @mdavis @firefoxwebdevs
In my admittedly limited experience with exceptionally dubious features that the users don't want, but the executives do, it's also not truly an 'AI kill switch' until it also fires the people responsible for putting 'AI' into the thing in the first place.
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@dante seems like a valid question to me. I mean it's literally a different tool than prompted genAI, and the definition of "AI" keeps shifting.
@joshg this is pedantic. this is attempting to get around the broader concern which is that people are fucking tired of getting LLM bullshit shoved in their faces in every app. Just gut it. Gut all of it. No one cares about this definitional shit. Firefox has addons for a reason
