Firefox’s runs locally while google’s runs on their (much more powerful) servers, for something similar to chrome’s I’d just get the deepl extension, which does the same thing just better.
You don’t have to use google translate (there are 2 other services included), and TWP doesn’t reload the page when you toggle the translate function off and on like the built in one did.
When I turned it off the translation thingy went away, so I’m not sure if it was AI all along and they were lying about it or not. Just as well, there’s an extension that works fine and it doesn’t reload the page every time I toggled it like the built in one did.
The translation is technically AI, but it’s a distant cousin to the LLMs and image generators that have repulsed so many people. (The term AI is such a broad and vague umbrella that Netflix recommendations count as AI.) And, even more notably, this is before Mozilla started marketing things as AI.
It was also a joint non-profit venture with a university, rather than today’s weird gimmicks or for-profit partnerships.
It’s less a vague umbrella and more an academic category. It just feels odd to call it vague in the same way you wouldn’t call “chemistry” vague, despite it having applications ranging from hand soap to toxic waste.
In this case, the vagueness of the term AI is abused by its fans. “Aha, you claim to hate AI, and yet…” they say. They should know better.
“Chemicals” is actually a great example. If someone said “Chemicals are coming out of that factory”, you’d rightfully cringe if a factory manager said “well actually soap is made of chemicals too”
It’s worth mentioning in my opinion though, because if someone were to say “we should ban chemicals” it’d be worthwhile to point out what that actually means.
I don’t actually think the broadness of the category is intentionally abused, it’s just that it’s an incredibly common thing to remove anything from the AI category that’s explicable.
I feel slightly more hanlons razor about it since there’s people in my city talking about and petitioning on the popular notion of banning all data centers from the state, and how it would be awful if s data center came here. I know what they mean, but it’s not what they’re trying to get the law to do, and our city already has six data centers I know of off the top of my head. The language drift is fine, but when it starts to conflate with policy it’s another issue.
Considering data centers tend to harm the local communities, yeah, I can’t blame them for wanting data centers out of their community. Make sure they don’t break the law to poison the air of local communities like Elon Musk’s data center did. Fix the other electricity loopholes. Make sure they don’t destroy local water tables. Tax them appropriately. Don’t let them lie about employment opportunities… And maybe then we can talk about whether they should be built.
And?
Because the term AI was not in vogue at the time, even though it’s clearly the same technology, it doesn’t count? It’s literally packaged under the same umbrella now.
Anyway, the big issue is still tech ppl thinking their viewpoint is the only one valid, and that every generic user will have the same exact needs as them.
Not all these arguments no.
You’re defending your position that this AI feature is not really AI so it’s ok, but the others are all bad because of the two letters of the devil.
Still AI is a marketing term, always has been. AI in the form of machine learning has been around for more than a decade, and lots of things already use that.
The knee jerk reaction of tech circles saying mozilla will sell their soul because there is no “kill switch” is so fucking dumb. Even more dumb is thinking no other users may want any of these features. Unless you work at Mozilla, and/or do product research for browsers, chances are you most likely have no idea how people will want to use these features in their day to day.
Even working on one’s own product in a company, few really understand the users needs and wants, especially tech persons.
I can guarantee you, the weird gimmick you don’t understand is crucial to some.
You’re defending your position that this AI feature is not really AI so it’s ok
I literally say “The translation is technically AI,” so no. I give reasons how the other features are different, which you seem to acknowledge a little, at least.
the weird gimmick you don’t understand is crucial to some
Can you describe how to access the gimmick and which people find it crucial? I’m pretty confident in my understanding of it and how hilariously unhelpful it is.
Being technically something implies it’s not really or to be considered apart from the group.
The “gimmick” is proposing alt text based on the image when editing PDFs. I don’t see how it’s unhelpful. I’m not into editing PDFs in firefox, but I do use it to read them.
Inciting editors to include an alt text for accessibility seems like the ideal use case for this tech. The human still has to review and approve the generated text.
Unless I missed something as I cannot try the feature now, it seems to me a great application of ai, to augment humans in their work, and to a useful cause.
Image classification and description is “old” tech now, and I already use it in my work to auto tag images for editors to find more easily later. Nothing crazy.
There enlies my point. Mozilla added a feature that is buried so deep in Firefox that you don’t even know if it’s actually there.
It is there, believe it or not. I criticize these things, but I also tested it the day it arrived.
But despite the way Mozilla buried it, the code is still there. It still makes Firefox more complex to maintain, and Mozilla still spent time and money putting it in. Imagine if Mozilla spent those resources actually trying to help people, instead of treating AI like companies used to treat blockchain: as a solution looking for a problem.
The “gimmick” is proposing alt text based on the image when editing PDFs. I don’t see how it’s unhelpful.
A gambling toolbar that links to Polymarket could be helpful. But I think we both said “crucial”.
If you know someone who uses Firefox to add images to PDFs so often that the alt text generation would be crucial to them, or even more than a gimmick, please introduce me to them. I have so many burning questions. Several things related to “why not a dedicated PDF editor?!”
To be fair people liked the translation feature too
I tried FF translation a couple times, and it’s woefully poor compared to Google’s. What am I doing wrong?
Firefox’s runs locally while google’s runs on their (much more powerful) servers, for something similar to chrome’s I’d just get the deepl extension, which does the same thing just better.
TWP does it better.
TWP dumps your pages to google translate, no thanks. FF is on device
You don’t have to use google translate (there are 2 other services included), and TWP doesn’t reload the page when you toggle the translate function off and on like the built in one did.
Those are still external services. I didn’t mention them because they carry the exact same risks
Ssshhh don’t say that too loud or the “no one wanted this” crowd may hear you. They would be very scared if they could read.
In the original announcement that they added translation, they didn’t call it AI. They didn’t even call it machine “learning” or machine translation there.
They just called it local, automated translation.
Maybe you should take your own advice about reading, and double-check my comment ;)
When I turned it off the translation thingy went away, so I’m not sure if it was AI all along and they were lying about it or not. Just as well, there’s an extension that works fine and it doesn’t reload the page every time I toggled it like the built in one did.
The translation is technically AI, but it’s a distant cousin to the LLMs and image generators that have repulsed so many people. (The term AI is such a broad and vague umbrella that Netflix recommendations count as AI.) And, even more notably, this is before Mozilla started marketing things as AI.
It was also a joint non-profit venture with a university, rather than today’s weird gimmicks or for-profit partnerships.
It’s less a vague umbrella and more an academic category. It just feels odd to call it vague in the same way you wouldn’t call “chemistry” vague, despite it having applications ranging from hand soap to toxic waste.
In this case, the vagueness of the term AI is abused by its fans. “Aha, you claim to hate AI, and yet…” they say. They should know better.
“Chemicals” is actually a great example. If someone said “Chemicals are coming out of that factory”, you’d rightfully cringe if a factory manager said “well actually soap is made of chemicals too”
I take your point. :)
It’s worth mentioning in my opinion though, because if someone were to say “we should ban chemicals” it’d be worthwhile to point out what that actually means.
I don’t actually think the broadness of the category is intentionally abused, it’s just that it’s an incredibly common thing to remove anything from the AI category that’s explicable.
I feel slightly more hanlons razor about it since there’s people in my city talking about and petitioning on the popular notion of banning all data centers from the state, and how it would be awful if s data center came here. I know what they mean, but it’s not what they’re trying to get the law to do, and our city already has six data centers I know of off the top of my head. The language drift is fine, but when it starts to conflate with policy it’s another issue.
Considering data centers tend to harm the local communities, yeah, I can’t blame them for wanting data centers out of their community. Make sure they don’t break the law to poison the air of local communities like Elon Musk’s data center did. Fix the other electricity loopholes. Make sure they don’t destroy local water tables. Tax them appropriately. Don’t let them lie about employment opportunities… And maybe then we can talk about whether they should be built.
And?
Because the term AI was not in vogue at the time, even though it’s clearly the same technology, it doesn’t count? It’s literally packaged under the same umbrella now.
Anyway, the big issue is still tech ppl thinking their viewpoint is the only one valid, and that every generic user will have the same exact needs as them.
I already addressed all of these arguments in another comment in this thread…
Not all these arguments no.
You’re defending your position that this AI feature is not really AI so it’s ok, but the others are all bad because of the two letters of the devil.
Still AI is a marketing term, always has been. AI in the form of machine learning has been around for more than a decade, and lots of things already use that.
The knee jerk reaction of tech circles saying mozilla will sell their soul because there is no “kill switch” is so fucking dumb. Even more dumb is thinking no other users may want any of these features. Unless you work at Mozilla, and/or do product research for browsers, chances are you most likely have no idea how people will want to use these features in their day to day.
Even working on one’s own product in a company, few really understand the users needs and wants, especially tech persons.
I can guarantee you, the weird gimmick you don’t understand is crucial to some.
I literally say “The translation is technically AI,” so no. I give reasons how the other features are different, which you seem to acknowledge a little, at least.
Can you describe how to access the gimmick and which people find it crucial? I’m pretty confident in my understanding of it and how hilariously unhelpful it is.
Being technically something implies it’s not really or to be considered apart from the group.
The “gimmick” is proposing alt text based on the image when editing PDFs. I don’t see how it’s unhelpful. I’m not into editing PDFs in firefox, but I do use it to read them.
Inciting editors to include an alt text for accessibility seems like the ideal use case for this tech. The human still has to review and approve the generated text.
Unless I missed something as I cannot try the feature now, it seems to me a great application of ai, to augment humans in their work, and to a useful cause.
Image classification and description is “old” tech now, and I already use it in my work to auto tag images for editors to find more easily later. Nothing crazy.
There enlies my point. Mozilla added a feature that is buried so deep in Firefox that you don’t even know if it’s actually there.
It is there, believe it or not. I criticize these things, but I also tested it the day it arrived.
But despite the way Mozilla buried it, the code is still there. It still makes Firefox more complex to maintain, and Mozilla still spent time and money putting it in. Imagine if Mozilla spent those resources actually trying to help people, instead of treating AI like companies used to treat blockchain: as a solution looking for a problem.
A gambling toolbar that links to Polymarket could be helpful. But I think we both said “crucial”.
If you know someone who uses Firefox to add images to PDFs so often that the alt text generation would be crucial to them, or even more than a gimmick, please introduce me to them. I have so many burning questions. Several things related to “why not a dedicated PDF editor?!”