By: Why Vivaldi’s Anti-AI Browser Is Great News For Humanity
[…] has stated that it will not add AI to its browser, citing concerns about accuracy, ethics, and the […]
By: JTN
Vivaldi has been my primary browser for many years both on desktop and Android. Do I like everything about it? No I don't. Like the email client is unnecessary, and there might be a bit too many settings.
No AI is a good thing to me, not mainly because of privacy concern but because I don't use it and it's only more bloat that I have to disable.
I do however prefer too many settings than too few. And once you get used to it it's really not that hard to navigate. There is also a pretty good search in the settings window.
The Android version got some nice features like an ad blocker that you can actually add your own lists to, and and option to put the tab bar and address bar at the bottom for easy one handed navigation.
By: JTN
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/140107/vivaldi-takes-firm-stance-against-ai-will-not-include-it-in-its-browser/#comment-10441224">bgoodman</a>.
At least Vivaldi Android got an ad blocker that you can add your own lists to. Most mobile browsers don't even have an ad blocker and much less one you can customize like that.
I agree Vivaldi Desktop might have a little too many features, but I prefer that to not having enough features or customization. It's been the best browser for me for many years.
By: franko
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/140107/vivaldi-takes-firm-stance-against-ai-will-not-include-it-in-its-browser/#comment-10441232">wocowboy</a>.
"and will never use it because of the gigantic privacy concerns primarily."
That's why I run LLM's locally. I use Ollama with the Firefox addon 'Page Assist - A Web UI for Local AI Models'.
By: Book Squirrel
Somewhat relevant in this context:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-024-09775-5 (Hicks, Humphries & Slater, 2024 june 8, ChatGPT is bullshit)
Basic argument of the paper is that using words like "hallucinations" and "lies" about LLMs is actually a misleading anthropomorphisation, because the way they function they're incapable of considering what's true or not. They're purpose-built to generate human language and nothing more. They're statistical next-token generators and there is no mechanism for building or considering a consistent model of the world. Thus, they're always inherently bullshitting, even when they happen to generate true statements.
An interesting point made is that to make the models "creative" and generate variation in their output, you have to raise the "temperature" of the model, that is the randomness. But doing that also increases the chance that the statistics-based language it outputs will be factually incorrect.
And the lower the temperature of the model is, the higher the chance that it's just going to output copyrighted material verbatim (because that's where the statistical correlation is highest). That is, the answers might be more likely to be correct on a lower temperature, but then that would be because it's effectively just copying text it's seen.
By: unix_joe
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/140107/vivaldi-takes-firm-stance-against-ai-will-not-include-it-in-its-browser/#comment-10441240">lproven</a>.
It's being promoted the past few days by Vivaldi on Mastodon after Mozilla's recent announcements.
Also trending right now is Ladybird browser.
By: lproven
Good post and I like and endorse Vivaldi's move, but this blog post is from 6 months ago. The dateline is February.
By: drstorm
I do not think the term "machine learning" is a good substitute for "AI." It is too broad. For example, if Vivaldi has mouse gestures, then it uses machine learning. Instead, if you really want to avoid saying AI, I suggest simply "chatbot."
By: Geck
I checked, for Vivaldi to be free user privacy must be sold. So if people in general accept a concept, there is no more privacy, then i guess AI adoption is not something people will in general fight against. At least not from the privacy point of view.
By: wocowboy
Good for Vivaldi! I have used Vivaldi as one of my preferred browsers for years, and while it does have its quirks, it does fine for what I need it for and I am very happy I won't have to deal with any AI garbage while using it. I have absolutely NO interest in AI whatsoever, don't want it and will never use it because of the gigantic privacy concerns primarily.
By: cevvalkoala
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/140107/vivaldi-takes-firm-stance-against-ai-will-not-include-it-in-its-browser/#comment-10441223">andyprough</a>.
First of all, I still use Pale Moon for some specific tasks, and I will continue do so for the foreseeable future.
Having said that, unfortunately it's rendered obsolete. Not by any fault on part of its developer or its community, but because of the way the web evolved in the past decade.
Pale moon and the old Firefox engine it runs on is failing on more and more sites. I know that's because of the laziness of the website developers, but that's the case.
And then the extensions... I guess only one tenth of the extensions on the Pale moon site got any update in the past 3 years. And that may be a generous estimate.
It was a noble attempt, and I have every praise to the developer for the huge work undertaken. Realistically however, it's just part of the good old days we will always remember and cherish. I will always wish my browser didn't clutter my task manager with 20 processes.
By: bgoodman
I have been with Firefox for more than a decade. I desperately want there to be an alternative to Chrome.
But the Mozilla foundation has completely lost me and I can't stomach them any more. And with Firefox having an irrelevant share of the market, I have started having a lot of web sites that just don't work with it any more. Therefore, I decided to move to a Chromium-based browser.
I switched to Vivaldi a couple months ago and have been quite happy with it. Yes, it has way too many features (please don't include a half-baked email client). The good news is that the interface is highly customizable, so I just remove 75% of the controls to get a clean interface.
I wish the Android version allowed y0u use uBlock Origin, but I understand why they don't.
I have been thrilled to see them state they won't include AI.
The only complaint I have with them is that their bug-reporting and development process is opaque. If you submit a bug report, the only way to track it is to periodically send an email to them and ask the status of the bug. That's ridiculous.
Vivaldi is currently the best browser solution in my opinion.
By: andyprough
>"there’s very few – if any – browsers left, other than Vivaldi, it seems – that will be free of these tools"
Pale Moon won't have any AI added to it. That's another one that will continue to be free of AI.
By: Vivaldi ? AI ??????????????????? AI ?????? – OSAlert - ???????
[…] ???: https://www.osnews.com/story/140107/vivaldi-takes-firm-stance-against-ai-will-not-include… […]
By: NaGERST
It is a very good move by the vivaldi team. i tried to use vivaldi as my main pc browser, but as it uses tye blink engine i have some minor annoyances that made me go back to firefox. i still use it occationally on my work phine though.