[mrb]

Opposite viewpoint: browsers are for much more than "browsing". It's been 10-20 years that browsers have become the only app many people ever use, on a computer. So they already almost do everything: video conferencing, instant messaging, editing documents, sending emails, image editors, video games, calendar management, etc

So at this point, frankly, "running a local LLM" is a pretty minor feature compared to the entire feature set of an average browser.

[al_borland]

The video conferencing, messaging, document editing, and games are things browsers can load from an external source. That’s different than running it locally.

[mrb]

You forget the web browser standards had to be extended to add support for a lot of that stuff I mentioned:

- built-in support of USB webcam (for video conferencing)

- WebGL for video games

- XMLHTTPRequest to support active pages (email, calendar, etc)

- <canvas> for arbitrary 2D image (image editors, etc)

My point is that this stuff was not necessary either to simply "browse the internet". Browsers constantly evolve to provide more and more complex features beyond browsing.

[al_borland]

My thinking is that those are additions developers can use to enable better experiences with a service hosted remotely. The local LLM seems like an end-user feature.

The local LLM feels like it could/should be its own app, separate from the browser. If the point of the local AI is not keep the users data local, it seems confusing to have it in the browser at all.