Firefox uses on-device downloaded-on-demand ML models for privacy-preserving translation.
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@bjn @StarkRG @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard Wasn't it Mark Zuckerberg of whom it was said, in the early days of Facebook, "if you're not paying for the product you ARE the product"?
@cstross @bjn @StarkRG @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard it's older than that. The phrase dates from "free" broadcast TV at least.
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@m I agree the folks I'm polling here do not represent the average user, but in this case I'm specifically interested in the thoughts of those who really dislike 'AI', and I think I've reached them
@firefoxwebdevs @m So you decided from the discussions last time that you didn't want opt in at all, like microsoft renaming office to "copilot app" this is nothing but doing a 3 card monty to try and fool people into validating your fractally wrong interpretation of what "opt in" is.
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@firefoxwebdevs @mawhrin @zzt @yoasif @fmasy @Rycochet @davidgerard Since you have not provided options for the opinion that people will have here, and included one for
the results can not be correct.. -
@firefoxwebdevs @m So you decided from the discussions last time that you didn't want opt in at all, like microsoft renaming office to "copilot app" this is nothing but doing a 3 card monty to try and fool people into validating your fractally wrong interpretation of what "opt in" is.
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@firefoxwebdevs you know if you had a button in settings that said "no AI" the majority of your userbase would click that button.
Phrased as "you know" because you DO know. You also know that the userbase tend to contain people happy to toggle settings meaning that if the userbase grows to those who don't care that's fine too.
So just get a clear toggle and watch people toggle it.
@ohyran Absolutely looking forward to the feature landing so folks can do just that!
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@firefoxwebdevs @noah We also don't trust to you keep your word.
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@firefoxwebdevs I voted in the poll for the least bad option, but I now regret that. Because it’s all so pointless isn’t it? You don’t actually care what I think or what the other users think. If you did you would have asked if we wanted ai slop at all, not what flavour of slop we preferred.
@Abigyil I've already used the results of this poll to push for change in the AI kill switch feature. The feedback has been really useful, and I'm grateful for it.
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@firefoxwebdevs @mawhrin @zzt @yoasif @fmasy @Rycochet @davidgerard
You ignored the real question to comment on something inconsequenctial, this is a well known propaganda and domination technique, answer the question I asked instead....
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Put them where they belong, as an extension...
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@firefoxwebdevs @xela If you are doing PR for the company about how great AI is, maybe it would be nice for you to know what you are talking about?...
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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 Way to manually enable and disable extensions from toolbar would be good -
@firefoxwebdevs @xela I read earlier that everything goes into english so that if I translate something from swedish to norwegian, two very closely related languages firefox will translate from swedish into english, then from english into norwegian, this is per definition a shitty feature that introduces a ton of vagueries, and multiplies errors by over a magnitude, but I guess as an english speaker something like that would never occur to you, because you don't have to deal with the shitty consequences of such an anglocentric decision.
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@firefoxwebdevs @xela If you didn't think it was great you would do the sensible thing and develop them as addons rather than including them into the executable to pump up the number of people seen using it...
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@firefoxwebdevs @mawhrin @zzt @yoasif @fmasy @Rycochet @davidgerard
Well, yes, the poll output is inaccurate.
There was no „Dont put any AI in Firefox“ or „Make AI an Add-On only“ option. You’re framing of the poll presupposes there being AI in the product, implying an incorrect necessity.
Why are you ruining this browser with this crap?
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@firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard @yoasif @fmasy @Rycochet @zzt
I didn’t see the poll before this post, but my number one request to Mozilla remains the same:
Stop using the term ‘AI’ anywhere.
It is a meaningless marketing term pushed by the worst parts of the tech industry. Don’t use a catch all for a bunch of unrelated things, name them individually and explain to users why they should care (if you can’t, don’t ship them at all). And make all of them off by default.
Feel free to pop up a dialog saying ‘This page is in a language that you haven’t said you speak, Firefox has optional on-device translation models trained ethically (see here for more information)k would you like to install them? (If you decide not to, you can change this decision later in settings) [ Never install translation models ] [ Never install translation models for this language ] [ Install translation model for this language ] [ Automatically install translation models for any language ]’.
Similarly, if a user hovers over an image with no alt text, feel free to pop up a dialog saying ‘This image has no text description. Firefox has an on-device image-recognition model that is ethically trained (see here for more information) that can attempt to provide one automatically. Would you like to install it? If you do not, you can later install it from settings. [ Do not install image-recognition model ] [ Install image-recognition model ]’.
And, in both of these cases, pop up that dialog at most once.
See how neither of these needed to say ‘AI’? Because they were explaining what the model did and why. This is how you communicate with users if you care about users more than you care about investors and hype trains.
@david_chisnall @firefoxwebdevs @davidgerard @yoasif @fmasy @Rycochet @zzt
May I repeat David's (and other's) point, and politely request a response: what is the thinking behind this being on-by-default?
If it were off-by-default you'd have an easy argument to fend off the majority of criticism. If Mozilla management and devs sincerely think this is the future of browsers, add it in in all the ways you think it might be useful, but have it all off and very easily addable (as David outlined).
If it is really useful to people, users will be clamouring for it, and you can go from there.
I can think of no way it could make sense to have it on-by-default, unless you count the fact that in that scenario lots of less technical people will then simply put up with it, and be added to the stats of "AI users" on Firefox.
Am I missing something? How does it being on-by-default serve anyone, and in what specific ways does it serve them?
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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 yes but let users enable just translations. Rationale: if they're disabled unconditionally, you're holding useful functionality hostage until the user disables the killswitch. If they're enabled unconditionally, they set a precedent that "AI" features disregarding the killswitch is sometimes okay, and then we're back to arguing with you about what "sometimes" means. Let the user decide by *explicitly* overriding the killswitch for whatever features they actually want.
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Let's ask the real question:
Firefox users,
do you want any AI directly built into Firefox, or separated out into extensions?
@duke_of_germany I ditched Firefox for a combo of Waterfox and Librewolf long enough ago that I forget what it was that made me do so, it was before they started playing footsie with AI... probably the baked-in telemetry, or something like that... whatever it was, it made me ditch T-bird as well.
AND yes, Mozilla should not be messing with AI _at all_.
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Just give me an easy to find switch that removes _all_ LLM and "AI"-features in Firefox, thank you.
@knud @firefoxwebdevs No, put it in an extension so that it won't be "magically reenabled" like all the other ml options I kept having to disable when I was still using firefox...
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@zzt @yoasif @fmasy @Rycochet @davidgerard My interpretation of the poll results is that the vast majority of people feel that the translation engine should be disabled as part of an AI kill switch, but there should be a way to re-enable the translation engine whilst leaving the kill switch otherwise active.
@firefoxwebdevs @zzt @yoasif @fmasy @Rycochet @davidgerard the poll was misleading and i am sure i am not the only one who voted to re-enable the translation because it wasn't fully clear what that meant. if i could revoke my vote i would.
option for people who just want to see the result without voting, rather than make a non-serious vote. It's a pretty common thing to do.
