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afavourtoday at 5:48 PM2 repliesview on HN

I’m an AI skeptic. I think a lot of these pronouncements about how AI is going to revolutionize the workplace and/or society itself are made by snake oil salesmen who are looking out for their own profits. And yet. I think skepticism can go too far.

One area I really do think AI is going to take over is web search. Primarily because web search these days is so shitty but that’s besides the point. AI is absolutely going to be a core feature used by the users of web browsers, and a web browser is the core of what Mozilla offers. They absolutely should be present in this space. And I hope, even though it’s an immense challenge, they might be able to offer an alternative to the aforementioned snake oil salesmen.


Replies

strict9today at 6:31 PM

>Primarily because web search these days is so shitty but that’s besides the point.

Obviously there are a lot of reasons for this. But I think one of the most important reasons is that there is so few organic interesting content destinations anymore.

Sure there are some neat shopify stores, news sites, and a few dedicated souls keeping up blogs. But so much of the casual browsing that the web once was has been obliterated by the move to social media.

And what hasn't moved is now a mess of AI generated fluff or link farms.

I used to think Google made search worse to increase ad revenue. And maybe it's tangentially related. But the stuff I used to search for and find and get inspiration from has moved to walled gardens. Reddit is one of the few remaining open web destinations left.

AI can't solve that problem.

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nemomarxtoday at 5:50 PM

What's the use case of an ai chat built into the browser instead of just going to a web page that has it? I would think ai browser integration should be about automating it or something instead