Technology @lemmy.world starman @programming.dev 6 mo. ago

MemoryCache, a Mozilla Innovation Project

memorycache.ai MemoryCache

MemoryCache is an experimental developer project to turn a local desktop environment into an on-device AI agent.

33 comments

The website does a bad job explaining what its current state actually is. Here's the GitHub repo's explanation:

Memory Cache is a project that allows you to save a webpage while you're browsing in Firefox as a PDF, and save it to a synchronized folder that can be used in conjunction with privateGPT to augment a local language model.

So it's just a way to get data from browser into privateGPT, which is:

PrivateGPT is a production-ready AI project that allows you to ask questions about your documents using the power of Large Language Models (LLMs), even in scenarios without an Internet connection. The project provides an API offering all the primitives required to build private, context-aware AI applications.

So basically something you can ask questions like "how much butter is needed for that recipe I saw last week?" and "what are the big trends across the news sites I've looked at recently?". But eventually it'll automatically summarize and data mine everything you look at to help you learn/explore.

Neat.
- They should find a better fitting name than MemoryCache. Thanks for this comment.
- Damn, this is EXACTLY the kind of project I've been seeking out and trying to figure out.
  
  I want all my browsing habits stored locally for AI to tell me what I saw, or to find something I read, or to dig up a citation I swear exists.
I thought they're trying to reinvent in-memory key-val storage meant for caching.
- I don't think this name is very fitting, because that was my first thought as well. Something like "Firefox local assistant" would probably be a bit clearer.
  
  I think it's gonna be another Pocket -- stuff nobody wants that Mozilla keeps on pushing for no apparent reason.
- Looks like Mozilla is inspired by Microsoft's great naming skills
  
  Let's call everything link, but each product misspelled in a unique way.
Interesting project. Terrible name.
- Instead of saying "I googled it", we can say "I memcached it" 🤔
This thing sounds mostly like a way to explore the possibilities with AI. Which I'm all for.

It sounds like it will learn from what you do in your browser, and as we are humans and therefore have alot of habits, then we might find this tool useful!
We're not breaking ground on AI innovation (in fact, we're using an old, "deprecated" file format from a whole six months ago)

The ggml format isn't "deprecated" it's completely dead. In those 6 months we've also seen 2-4x speedups on some systems, not to mention improved accuracy via kquants. I don't know why they would build out a new extension with such an ancient dependency.
Well, unlike the last project, at least this one isn't feeding data directly into the OpenAI corporation.

And unlike their very non-private, non-optional shopping extension, this one isn't being force installed in all Firefox browsers.
This seems interesting.
Why does it have such a generic name that has nothing to do with the project? Also as soon as I see "privacy and terms of conditions" it raised red flags when it's supposed to be on device.
I've been holding back my Mozilla funding because they are shirking work on Firefox and Servo
what in the actual fuck is this stupid shit and why is mozilla anywhere near it?
- Open source project focused on giving people features they want but in a privacy and censorship resistant way. Classic Moz
  
  Seriously, what's with all the Mozilla hate on Lemmy? People bitch about almost everything they do. Sometimes it feels like, because it's non-profit/open-source, people have this idealized vision of a monastery full of impoverished, but zealous, single-minded monks working feverishly and never deviating from a very tiny mission.
  
  Cards on the table, I remain an AI skeptic, but I also recognize that it's not going anywhere anytime soon. I vastly prefer to see folks like Mozilla branching out into the space a little than to have them ignore it entirely and cede the space to corporate interests/advertisers.
  
  Who asked for this
  
  How is this, which is now baked into Firefox, private
  
  but it is not a feature i want. not now, not ever. An inbuilt bullshit generator, now with less training and more bullshit is not something I ever asked for.
  
  Training one of these ais requires huge datacenters, insanely huge datasets and millions of dollars in resources. And I'm supposed to believe one will be effectively trained by the pittance of data generated by browsing?
- Permanently Deleted
- If Mozilla doesn't diversify, it will die! Throwing money at [current year buzzword] is the only solution

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