Google Chrome is downloading a 4 GB Gemini Nano model onto users' machines without consent, with no opt-in, no opt-out short of enterprise tooling, and an automatic re-download every time the user deletes it. The pattern is identical to the Anthropic Claude Desktop case I wrote about last month, but the scale is between two and three orders of magnitude larger. This article does the legal analysis and, for the first time, the environmental analysis. The numbers are not small.
The article, as usual, makes no comparison to the environmental impact of companies like McDonalds (who use PER DAY what every AI data centre combined in the world uses PER YEAR, not companies like Shell or BP who are orders of magnitude worse than that. This is the usual anti-ai fear-mongering bollocks.
Should Google have installed it unasked? No, that’s bullshit, possibly illegal bullshit but honestly considering how disingenuous the environmental impact is I can’t trust the legal stuff that I don’t know about either. But it is not an environmental catastrophe as whoever wrote this article would like you to believe for some reason.
Honest question: why are the haters pushing their nonsense? What do they have to gain?
edit: As usually the haters and useful idiots provide nonsense counterpoints and downvote because they don’t have laugh reacts to demonstrate their groupthink and wilful ignorance. I really wish they’d all shut the hell up, they’re annoying!
look im far from a monger but this argument makes no sense. mdconalds makes food. which is a necessity. In addition its actually pretty well known for its efficiency. So its a question of output vs input. Now granted. super unhealthy but they don’t sneak mcdonalds into your home cooked meal while your not looking. This article is far from nonsense.
No, that’s a really fucking dumb argument. Stop being an idiot
Take your own advice. I can grow and raise my own food, so the grocery store is just a convenience. You’re just angrily trying to draw a meaningless line in the sand to prop up your ego argument, and it shows.
No, I’m angrily calling out bullshit that is bullshit, but you thought Terminator was a documentary and so will immediately believe anything that says AI is bad no matter now outlandish rather than actually learn anything
Based on your comments and previo8us experience I don;t see a single thing I’ve said that is wrong. I also have never seen a single thing you haters have said that is right. Stop believing fearmongering youtubers
I’m gonna need some references to back up those energy claims. I do not see McDonalds (or any other restaurant) operating methane gas turbine generators because the energy grid can’t keep up with their power demands.
Also great to know you don’t have to pay to get storage in your devices, otherwise you’d be quite unhappy to see it taken out of your control for no feature (Chrome still relies on cloud services for most AI features).
I don’t even know what you’re getting at here. You claim my comment, which points out how disingenuous the article is, is whataboutism, then provide some whataboutism.
Article talk about pushing a large model on people’s computer. You minimize this by going about McDonalds, Shell, BP. Do you even know what “whataboutism” mean? Your first sentence is “what about McDonald, Shell, BP”.
I’m calling out how stupidly and obviously disingenuous the article is. That’s not whataboutism. Do you know what disingenuous means? The article claims it has a huge environmental impact. It doesn’t.
Are they hating, or are they pointing out that companies that claim to be honestly working towards a “greener” end are adding unwanted and unnecessary code to users computers against their will. Code, BTW, that can not be removed permanently and adds not only the cost of the bandwidth of the download used, but also the general cost of the cloud-backed nature of it’s functioning to the mix. As someone that doesn’t use Chrome or the cloud, I’d be furious… The Keystone Agent (a perniciously rotten bit of code that eats clock cycles in one’s system and runs constantly in the background) that chrome updates with - it’s exactly why I quit the browser years ago.
Dunno why you’re so butthurt over the fact that beyond the environmental claims, the issue of code being deployed into someone’s system without their permission or any ability to halt or prevent it means less to you than the former point.
Do you work for google? 'Cos damn dude, you’re coming down on this like you do.
Can I send you this month’s electric bill to split the difference off of?
I have maintained a rigorous control on our home power useage for years and in spite of this, the bill has increased roughly 52% in the last year - and it’s aparently down to the increased demand that needs to be supplemented by purchasing power from outside of our region because of data centers.
If you love it so much… How about YOU pay the extra cost for those of us who did not ask for, and do not need, it.
It’s all part of the same thing… offloading burdens from the provider - be it a data center or google, onto the user, without permission.
No. It’s risen because corporate execs think they can gouge you for money to increase the high scores in their bank accounts. Increased demand means they’d be selling more which would mean more profits or even your bills decreasing if they were being fair. As usual it’s corps and billionaires that are the problem
Data center operators can and will negotiate yearly rates for bulk electricity up. That’s how they can guarantee supply, by paying more than the competition. Small local distributors will never have that kind of leverage, that’s why consumers end up paying more.
So yes, you are correct in saying that corporations and billionaires are the problem, but in this particular case, it’s because of a particular subset of those.
Jeez, calm your tits, I think I asked politely enough so I wouldn’t deserve this kind of response.
My question was what do you think this particular model does, not what is achievable with AI in general. And I’m asking because a model that weights 4GB is not some trivial thing that every Chrome user wants or needs loaded in memory.
That’s nothing to do with my point that the article’s claim about the environmental impact is bullshit. I don’t know or care what that model is, I’ve not looked, and it’s not relevant to my point. And yeah, you haters do deserve anger as a response because you are actively making the world worse via wilful ignorance, and we know what that does because of arseholes like trump and farrage.
I don’t hate AI. I work for an AI company. But I hate the uselessness of a lot of the AI derived products. So, for me, burning a single drop of oil to write an email in business speech, post a video of a kitten in a superman outfit, or make a Trump Jesus pic, is a waste.
And in many ways, AI is actively making the world worse too, from big tech stealing content from everyone to train their models, to deepfake content flooding social media, there’s no good coming out of that. So maybe you should chill a bit before going off rails like you did.
The article, as usual, makes no comparison to the environmental impact of companies like McDonalds (who use PER DAY what every AI data centre combined in the world uses PER YEAR, not companies like Shell or BP who are orders of magnitude worse than that. This is the usual anti-ai fear-mongering bollocks.
Should Google have installed it unasked? No, that’s bullshit, possibly illegal bullshit but honestly considering how disingenuous the environmental impact is I can’t trust the legal stuff that I don’t know about either. But it is not an environmental catastrophe as whoever wrote this article would like you to believe for some reason.
Honest question: why are the haters pushing their nonsense? What do they have to gain?
edit: As usually the haters and useful idiots provide nonsense counterpoints and downvote because they don’t have laugh reacts to demonstrate their groupthink and wilful ignorance. I really wish they’d all shut the hell up, they’re annoying!
look im far from a monger but this argument makes no sense. mdconalds makes food. which is a necessity. In addition its actually pretty well known for its efficiency. So its a question of output vs input. Now granted. super unhealthy but they don’t sneak mcdonalds into your home cooked meal while your not looking. This article is far from nonsense.
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Grocery stores are unnecessary too, you can just go kill/harvest/forage your own food. Shut up.
thanks.
What for? Coming out with a fucking stupid counterpoint? Weird thing to thank someone for
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Take your own advice. I can grow and raise my own food, so the grocery store is just a convenience. You’re just angrily trying to draw a meaningless line in the sand to prop up your
egoargument, and it shows.No, I’m angrily calling out bullshit that is bullshit, but you thought Terminator was a documentary and so will immediately believe anything that says AI is bad no matter now outlandish rather than actually learn anything
None of that refutes my point, or supports your non sequiturs, and is just making up bullshit about what you think I believe.
Based on your comments and previo8us experience I don;t see a single thing I’ve said that is wrong. I also have never seen a single thing you haters have said that is right. Stop believing fearmongering youtubers
I see what you’re saying and, parts of it, I’m on your side!
Those final two words there, I must say, do a disservice to the comment. One thought experiment: what makes Lemmy a pleasant place to debate?
I’m gonna need some references to back up those energy claims. I do not see McDonalds (or any other restaurant) operating methane gas turbine generators because the energy grid can’t keep up with their power demands.
I would assume the enormous environmental impact of McDonald’s comes from the amount of meat, specifically cow, they are responsible for
Can you convert those cow meats into watts? I was asking about energy usage in the context of that specific claim
Sure. 1 kcal ≈ 1.162 watt-hours.
Oh, some whataboutism. Great.
Also great to know you don’t have to pay to get storage in your devices, otherwise you’d be quite unhappy to see it taken out of your control for no feature (Chrome still relies on cloud services for most AI features).
I don’t even know what you’re getting at here. You claim my comment, which points out how disingenuous the article is, is whataboutism, then provide some whataboutism.
Article talk about pushing a large model on people’s computer. You minimize this by going about McDonalds, Shell, BP. Do you even know what “whataboutism” mean? Your first sentence is “what about McDonald, Shell, BP”.
I’m calling out how stupidly and obviously disingenuous the article is. That’s not whataboutism. Do you know what disingenuous means? The article claims it has a huge environmental impact. It doesn’t.
Are they hating, or are they pointing out that companies that claim to be honestly working towards a “greener” end are adding unwanted and unnecessary code to users computers against their will. Code, BTW, that can not be removed permanently and adds not only the cost of the bandwidth of the download used, but also the general cost of the cloud-backed nature of it’s functioning to the mix. As someone that doesn’t use Chrome or the cloud, I’d be furious… The Keystone Agent (a perniciously rotten bit of code that eats clock cycles in one’s system and runs constantly in the background) that chrome updates with - it’s exactly why I quit the browser years ago.
Nuts to that.
Chrome sucks, sure. Did you have a coherent point beyond that? No, didn’t think so.
You asked… I answered.
Dunno why you’re so butthurt over the fact that beyond the environmental claims, the issue of code being deployed into someone’s system without their permission or any ability to halt or prevent it means less to you than the former point.
Do you work for google? 'Cos damn dude, you’re coming down on this like you do.
The environmental impact of AI is massively overblown all the fucking time and I don’t like lies. And I do like AI
Can I send you this month’s electric bill to split the difference off of?
I have maintained a rigorous control on our home power useage for years and in spite of this, the bill has increased roughly 52% in the last year - and it’s aparently down to the increased demand that needs to be supplemented by purchasing power from outside of our region because of data centers.
If you love it so much… How about YOU pay the extra cost for those of us who did not ask for, and do not need, it.
It’s all part of the same thing… offloading burdens from the provider - be it a data center or google, onto the user, without permission.
No. It’s risen because corporate execs think they can gouge you for money to increase the high scores in their bank accounts. Increased demand means they’d be selling more which would mean more profits or even your bills decreasing if they were being fair. As usual it’s corps and billionaires that are the problem
Data center operators can and will negotiate yearly rates for bulk electricity up. That’s how they can guarantee supply, by paying more than the competition. Small local distributors will never have that kind of leverage, that’s why consumers end up paying more.
So yes, you are correct in saying that corporations and billionaires are the problem, but in this particular case, it’s because of a particular subset of those.
Hmmm. I wonder which corpo executive runs my local community power collective.
Pointing out the huge environmental cost and relative uselessness of shiny word predictors is not pushing nonsense.
Claiming a tiny environmental impact is huge in order to push an agenda is bullshit and you know it
Sticking your head in the sand and pretending everyone has an agenda is bullshit and you know it.
Right back at ya! Calling out bullshit agendas is not bullshit and you, know it
Ok dude. Enjoy
I think we found the google engineer.
Why? Because I’m not keen on lies and bullshit? I don’t work for google
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Classy. Did you learn your conversation skills via the internet?
What do you think this nano model actually achieves?
Because I know why someone would want to eat a burger, or fill up a tank, but why would anyone want this running in their computers?
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Jeez, calm your tits, I think I asked politely enough so I wouldn’t deserve this kind of response.
My question was what do you think this particular model does, not what is achievable with AI in general. And I’m asking because a model that weights 4GB is not some trivial thing that every Chrome user wants or needs loaded in memory.
That’s nothing to do with my point that the article’s claim about the environmental impact is bullshit. I don’t know or care what that model is, I’ve not looked, and it’s not relevant to my point. And yeah, you haters do deserve anger as a response because you are actively making the world worse via wilful ignorance, and we know what that does because of arseholes like trump and farrage.
I don’t hate AI. I work for an AI company. But I hate the uselessness of a lot of the AI derived products. So, for me, burning a single drop of oil to write an email in business speech, post a video of a kitten in a superman outfit, or make a Trump Jesus pic, is a waste.
And in many ways, AI is actively making the world worse too, from big tech stealing content from everyone to train their models, to deepfake content flooding social media, there’s no good coming out of that. So maybe you should chill a bit before going off rails like you did.
You work for an AI company and can see no good coming from AI? What?
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