It’s not just about AI in Firefox, but rather making an open-sourced AI in general. The world is absolutely heading towards AI integrations being normal; personally I’m glad we’ve got Mozilla working on an AI rather than being limited to closed-source AIs made by for-profit companies.
(It has been funny watching some of my coworkers learn a new coding technique and finding it to be so cool that they apply it everywhere regardless of whether it fits or not while I think to myself, “Ah, I remember when I went through that phase as a teenager!”)
I’m not a programmer (although suggestions on a language to start learning with - with no project in mind - would be welcome!), but I’ve found similar things with my old musical projects. I look back some old project files and see that I used various techniques all the time that I don’t necessarily use nowadays. Sometimes, I think I probably should use them more than I do now, but I definitely overused them back then when I first discovered them.
I guess it’s just exciting when you learn something and it opens up a bunch of possibilities for you!
All they do is hallucinate
I read an article a couple of months ago about AI usage in geolocation (link because it’s interesting, even though it’s not necessarily relevant). In it, they brought up a quote from a computer scientist / AI specialist who said he preferred the word “confabulate” to describe what happens with AI, rather than “hallucinate”
Confabulation: a type of memory error in which gaps in a person’s memory are unconsciously filled with fabricated, misinterpreted, or distorted information.
I agree with the guy that it’s a slightly better term for it, but I also just think it’s such a fun word that it’s too good not to share!
Yeah, it is daily. Which I personally find better than having to do it all in one go - it just fits into my routine as something I do when I turn my computer on - but I can definitely see the appeal of being able to do it all in one go for some people.
I pay for my Game Pass subscription with them. On average, it probably takes about a minute of interaction per day - I’ve macro’d the searches, so I’ll just leave my computer running the macro for a couple of minutes while I go and get a drink, clean my teeth, etc. Other than that, I just have to click all the links and then immediately close the tabs they open. Some days it takes a little longer because there are quizzes, but they’re rarely more than an extra minute.
So overall, I think it’s worthwhile for me;. It’s probably half an hour of “work” per month to get Game Pass. You can redeem points for other things like Amazon gift cards, too (although obviously they’re lower monetary value per point than Microsoft’own products/services).
While you’re at it, it might be worth including a “canary” in these kinds of posts.