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Firefox 148 introduces the promised AI kill switch for people who aren't into LLMs
(www.xda-developers.com)
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this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
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The translation is technically AI, but it's a distant cousin to the LLMs and image generators that have repulsed so many people. (The term AI is such a broad and vague umbrella that Netflix recommendations count as AI.) And, even more notably, this is before Mozilla started marketing things as AI.
It was also a joint non-profit venture with a university, rather than today's weird gimmicks or for-profit partnerships.
It's less a vague umbrella and more an academic category. It just feels odd to call it vague in the same way you wouldn't call "chemistry" vague, despite it having applications ranging from hand soap to toxic waste.
In this case, the vagueness of the term AI is abused by its fans. "Aha, you claim to hate AI, and yet..." they say. They should know better.
"Chemicals" is actually a great example. If someone said "Chemicals are coming out of that factory", you'd rightfully cringe if a factory manager said "well actually soap is made of chemicals too"
I take your point. :)
It's worth mentioning in my opinion though, because if someone were to say "we should ban chemicals" it'd be worthwhile to point out what that actually means.
I don't actually think the broadness of the category is intentionally abused, it's just that it's an incredibly common thing to remove anything from the AI category that's explicable.
I feel slightly more hanlons razor about it since there's people in my city talking about and petitioning on the popular notion of banning all data centers from the state, and how it would be awful if s data center came here. I know what they mean, but it's not what they're trying to get the law to do, and our city already has six data centers I know of off the top of my head. The language drift is fine, but when it starts to conflate with policy it's another issue.
Considering data centers tend to harm the local communities, yeah, I can't blame them for wanting data centers out of their community. Make sure they don't break the law to poison the air of local communities like Elon Musk's data center did. Fix the other electricity loopholes. Make sure they don't destroy local water tables. Tax them appropriately. Don't let them lie about employment opportunities... And maybe then we can talk about whether they should be built.