Most of the loudest critics - and, I’ve found, many commenters on HN - are entirely out of touch with the majority of technology users. To think that nobody wants these features isn’t based on what we see in the real world, which shows a billion users using ChatGPT every month. That, plus the fact that AI browsers already exist and have users, indicates that the argument is more “I don’t like AI and everyone else should agree” rather than “the data shows that nobody likes AI”.
Those critics then straw-man by saying the AI will take up a ton of resources in your browser (it could be as simple as a text box) or collect your data secretively (what company wants to deal with that PR fallout?).
Had to scroll way too far to find a comment like this. Unfortunately HN famously doesn’t understand what the average consumer wants. The Dropbox comment comes to mind.
I hadn't read comments about Dropbox and products/features until maybe a week or two ago and somehow don't know the reference despite having spent most of the last 20 years in tech.
I presume the story is along the lines of "someone declined to invest in Dropbox and lost out" but what do I need to google to get the actual context? I don't need a full rehash here.
Edit: or is it "Dropbox is adding features nobody wants" and then turning out to be wrong?
Edit again: presumably it's not about "Nobody Cares" by Dropbox, the band.
The basic summary is that a HN commenter suggested Dropbox was redundant because you could do some convoluted setup that 0.1% of the world would understand and 0.001% would actually want to use (and yes, that’s still a few hundred thousand people) and overall that aged poorly.
Those critics then straw-man by saying the AI will take up a ton of resources in your browser (it could be as simple as a text box) or collect your data secretively (what company wants to deal with that PR fallout?).