TL;DR: Mozilla recently released AI controls for Firefox: a single control panel that lets people disable AI features in the browser or pick and choose which to leave on. On the surface, this sounds like a win for user choice in an era of AI-everything.
If we dig deeper, you can start to see that the kill switch isn’t the whole story. This feature acts like an accountability sink. By giving you an off-switch, Mozilla’s leadership shifts the ethical burden of AI onto the user - turning their design choices into your responsibility.
You are aware translation services are available that are neither a local LLM nor Google-owned, yes? We had machine translation before ChatGPT existed, and I don’t think that tech evaporated in a sudden fire just because a more harmful option appeared.
The appropriate option for Mozilla would’ve been to not include AI at all. If they really, really couldn’t have swung that (they could’ve), then the second best option would be having all AI features set to off-by-default. Instead, we’ve got on-by-default. That is unambiguously a terrible idea.
Pre-LLM translation services also generally used AI, just via more traditional machine learning. The only difference is introducing a locally run LLM.
If it runs locally and is openly available, then it doesn’t make much difference to me if it’s a traditional model or a LLM.
Considering the negative impacts LLMs have on so many facets of life today, that’s kinda the problem. Running it locally only solves some of those.
Fundamentally though, I just don’t want the tech involved in my life at all anymore. I don’t care if it has a niche use here or not. It can just fuck off.