this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2025
17 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
77084 readers
2758 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The pathological need to find something to use LLMs for is so bizzare.
It’s like the opposite of classic ML, relatively tiny special purpose models trained for something critical, out of desperation, because it just can’t be done well conventionally.
But this:
Take out the word AI.
If this feature took, say, a gigabyte of RAM and a bunch of CPU, it would be laughed out. But somehow it ships because it has the word AI in it? That makes no sense.
I am a massive local LLM advocate. I like “generative” ML, within reason and ethics. But this is just stupid.
When I'm browsing around with multiple tabs open, the last thing I want is something to start moving them around and messing my flow up. This is a solution looking for a problem.
Yup
Auto naming functionality is neat in some cases, like the AI chat UI itself
Tab groups don't hit those points at all
I agree with you on almost everything.
Here i disagree. ML is using high dimensional statistics. There exist many problems, which are by their nature problems of high dimensional statistics.
If you have for an example an engineering problem, it can make sense to use an ML approach, to find patterns in the relationship between input conditions and output results. Based on this patterns you have an idea, where you need to focus in the physical theory for understanding and optimizing it.
Another example for "generative AI" i have seen is creating models of hearts. So by feeding it the MRI scans of hundreds of real hearts, millions of models for probable heart shapes can be created and the interaction with medical equipment can be studied on them. This isn't a "desperate" approach. It is a smart approach.
How do you tell what the patterns are, or how to interpret them?
The recognition of the pattern is done by the machine learning. That is the core concept of machine learning.
For the interpretation you need to use your domain knowledge. Machine learning together with knowledge in the domain analyzed can be a very powerful combination.
Another example in research i have heard about recently, is detection of brain tumors before they occur. MRIs are analyzed of people who later developed brain tumors to see if patterns can be detected in the people who developed the tumors that are absent in the people who didn't develop tumors. This knowledge of a correlation between certain patterns and later tumor development could help specialists to further their understanding of how tumors develop as they can analyze these specific patterns.
What we see with ChatGPT and other LLMs is kind of doing the opposite by detaching the algorithm from any specific knowledge. Subsequently the algorithm can make predictions on anything and they are worth nothing.
Venture capital dumped so much money into the tech without understanding the full scope of what it was capable of. Now they're so in so deep that they desperately NEED to find something profitable it can do, otherwise they'll lose the farm.
Firefox has little financial motivation for this, though?
Other than getting "AI" investor money, if that's the plan... But otherwise it just feels like they're following a meme.
It makes a lot more sense when you realize that the Mozilla corporation is a for profit run by the same techno-fascist aggrandizing bait-and-switch narcissists as the rest of SV.
I've been saying it for years, but I will never donate to Firefox until it is freed from the shackles of a for profit corporation that can use your donation for any profit motive it sees fit; not even related to Firefox.
Isn't the "for-profit" Mozilla Corporation owned by the "non-profit" Mozilla Foundation though?
I don't care. It's a corrosive force that causes them to pay for over priced CEO's and integrate services that nobody cares about into Firefox (like pocket) or that runs against their principles (container VPN's exclusive to Mozillas for-profit VPN).
90% of their cash flow comes from google to be the default search engine - they are probably trying to open up alternative routes of funding to reduce the risk, since it's not guaranteed that the money will keep coming due to the current lawsuit.
Right, I sympathize with that.
…But also it’s ridiculous. Like why should including a feature with “AI” in it get them VC money? Even if that’s kinda reality?
TBH they should just become a contributor to llama.cpp and market that somehow.
even without AI, to me tab groups are already feature creep bloat in browsers. do people really put that much effort into organizing tabs?
I like the tab groups. I use them often at work to group an issue with related tabs and my attempts at solving it. Also makes it easier to pause work on one problem and work on something else because I have the tabs grouper and know exactly where to go back.
And nobody should stop you installing an extension that provides tab groups. I agree with the other commentator that some features can be left to extensions and don't need to be part of the core web browser, though.
True, but I'm not sure that an extension would have the necessary access to manipulate the browser like that. I don't think it should. A malicious extension could do horrible things.
I don't know if they still do but they used to have. That, however, is something to discuss with the genius decision makers at Mozilla who decide to break extension APIs every couple of years. Firefox on Android still hasn't recovered from last time.