alt Hacker NewsIt's additional software that many users didn't ask for, don't want and will not be aware of. Reminds me a bit of back when installing software was a minefield due to all of the integrated "promotions" for things like toolbars, only now they've vertically integrated the unwanted software, cutting out the middleman.
Honestly, for most features you could justifiably say its fine. I mean honestly, how large is an English dictionary? 100 KiB? That is a far cry from 4 GiB. Just taking up 4 GiB of disk space without even asking is indeed a shit move no matter how you shake it. If Microsoft Word updated and suddenly took up 4 GiB more for something like a dictionary, it might not cause as much uproar as if it were something that many people are tired of hearing about and not interested in, but I'm not sure you would find a single soul who would find that acceptable, more just tolerated, probably partly because a lot of people simply wouldn't know better.
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> That is a far cry from 4 GiB
Equating a 4GB file installed without explicit consent to the installation of a language dictionary is comical. That's like saying an unwanted political mailer left in your mailbox is the equivalent of a pallette of hammers left in your driveway.
The issue is the size of the 'update' and the impact it'z going to have on your computer performance.
If tomorrow Google was to include a Blockchain miner in Google chrome, you'd still say you consented to it by using their software ?
Because I'm pretty sure that this LLM is also going to be used by Google to gather data on the user and feeding it to Google, hence just like the Blockchain miner using our computer ressources (space & performance) to feed Google yearly benefits.
> Reminds me a bit of back when installing software was a minefield due to all of the integrated "promotions" for things like toolbars, only now they've vertically integrated the unwanted software, cutting out the middleman.
You know, I never thought about it like that, but it is true. The bloat and spyware is a core part of the OS now.
It's just more efficient that way!
That 4 GiB will also update daily, because without churn it will be dead.
Chrome installs additional software that 99% of users don't use. It can intercept and modify code running on your computer, and spies on all network requests. Hackers use it to analyze potential vulnerabilities. 90% of users aren't even aware that it exists!
You could say the same thing about shipping V8 with Chrome. Some users disable JS so shipping V8 with Chrome is additional software they didn't ask for.
An AI is not additional software. Infact, a model is not software.
> It's additional software that many users didn't ask for, don't want and will not be aware of
You just described 95% of the parts of all software, especially in this era. And think of the Web - how many gigabytes of terrible adtech and tracking code does the average user download in a month of web browsing without an adblocker? Remember, each one probably packages in a couple hundred NPM dependencies into its bundle.
I don't have even a single use for Siri on my Mac. It's useless AND redundant with the Siri that I have to have on my phone, yet Apple downloaded and installed "Siri" on there. If I install GarageBand which is the only first-party way to do basic audio manipulation, Apple installs at least 4GB of audio samples on my Mac.
None of this is to say "I approve of this exact thing Google is doing" - just that I agree with GP that this is exactly the same as what every big company (and many small ones) do every day.
The only "consent" we ever get is basically the all-or-nothing EULA we have to click Agree to in order to log in for the first time - the relevant terms are "Want computer? Accept that we will be shipping you all kinds of code constantly, for 'reasons.'"