- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ml
- firefox@lemmy.ml
mozillafoundation.tfaforms.net
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@lemmy.ml
- firefox@lemmy.ml
I got a copy of the text from the email, and added it below, with personal information and link trackers removed.
Hello [receiver’s name],
I’ve long dreamed about working for Mozilla. I learned how to send encrypted e-mail using Mozilla Thunderbird, and I’ve been a Firefox user since almost as long as I can remember. In more recent years, I’ve been an avid follower of Mozilla’s advocacy work, and was lucky enough to partner with Mozilla on investigative journalism in my last job.
In many ways, Mozilla was the dream – and now, as the leader of the Foundation, my job is to make my dreams for Mozilla come true. What that means, though, is making your dreams come true – for a trustworthy and open future of technology; for tech that is a tool for liberation, not limitation; and for tech that values people over profit.
So I’m reaching out to technologists, activists, researchers, engineers, policy experts, and, most importantly, to you – the people who make up the Mozilla community – to ask a simple question.
[receiver’s name]. What is your dream for Mozilla? I invite you to take a moment to share your thoughts by completing this brief survey.
Let’s start with this question:
Question 1: What is most important to you right now about technology and the internet?
- Protecting my privacy online
- Avoiding scams
- Choosing products, apps, technology, and services that I can trust
- Keeping children safe online
- Responsible use of AI
- Keeping the internet is open and free
- Knowing how to spot misinformation
- Other (please specify)
With your help, together we can imagine and create the Internet we want. Thank you for being a part of this.
Always yours,
Nabiha Syed Executive Director Mozilla Foundation
You must log in or # to comment.
Embrace RFC 8890 (“The Internet is for End Users”) as a guiding principle for all Mozilla client app design and for the organization as a whole:
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8890.html
Specifically, delete item 9 from the Mozilla manifesto and replace it with “follow RFC 8890”. That’s not supposed to be an anti-business stance, but rather, a recognition that the commercial side of the internet has the resources to look after its own interests, and Mozilla should be on the user side, rather than trying to straddle both sides.
I want nothing to do with AI, everything is like “I want transparency” I dont want them involved at all, pissing away money buzz words.
What do you want from mozilla? an open source privacy focused browser.
But their AI helps protect privacy? The main thing it’s currently used for is offline private translation that doesn’t send data to Google’s servers.
The other main AI feature they’re working on is AI-generated alt-text for untagged images, so that blind people can better use the web.
I feel like you’re doing the classic Lemmy/Reddit thing of seeing the letters “AI” and automatically freaking out, before looking into what they’re actually doing. We aren’t talking about ChatGPT integration here…
You’re free to send your data to google or deepl instead of using Firefox’s included AI translate. You know, privacy, no AI in the browser, choose one.
deleted by creator
No, it isn’t. It’s integrated into the browser, and running locally.
I’m just saying that if you a) want translation and b) privacy then you want c) AI in firefox. Because, you know, translation models are AI tech, figures that natural language is too fuzzy to do in other ways.
Oh, I misinterpreted what you said, I understood it the other way around, my bad. Their page about the translation tool does say it runs locally though so it’s a good thing, isn’t it? https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/features/translate/
Yes it’s a good thing and it’s more locally-running stuff that they’re investigating. Things like fuzzy search on your history, tl;dr bot, etc.
Malware site detection would be another idea, though they of course already have a non-local solution for that. Maybe, we do have to come full circle after all don’t we, a model that can give you an estimation of how likely it is that the page you’re looking at is AI slop.
“We’ve decided to focus our efforts on AI and advertising. Please tell us why you think that’s a good idea!”
Found the person who only reads headlines!
There’s nothing wrong with using an LLM for offline private language translation. It literally preserves privacy by not simply sending all that data to a Google translation server.
There’s nothing wrong with using offline image recognition to aid in helping blind people know what’s on their screen.
As for their “advertising” - you should look up what they actually did. It completely preserves privacy while at the same time not completely destroying the economic model that content creators rely on. It’s a good thing. With any luck, regulators will enforce it.
My question is, who asked?
I have many opinions about machine learning and its current position in technology, but expressed none of it in the comment. In case you missed it, the point I was trying to make is that this is a bullshit survey with obviously loaded questions and foregone conclusions, uninterested in gathering impartial feedback or addressing concerns.
Well, you have the option to elaborate otherwise. Huge effort to normalize this survey.
I filled it, but there’s no avenue there to express my complete disdain for AI and how shit it can make a product. Just make everything AI optional, don’t make me download data for shit I’ll never use.
It’s opt-in already, in fact you have to go out of your way to do it. And it’s currently only used for offline, private language translation, to my knowledge.
That is a very good usecase considering the alternative is to send it to a Google translation server.
I feel like people need to actually read beyond the “Mozilla adds AI to Firefox” headlines.
Of all the things you could want from Firefox. Of all the possibilities.
The primary, only, thing you could come up with is “I don’t want privacy focused translation, because AI”
Without realizing the the grand majority of all translation tools that don’t suck have been AI driven for like 8+ years (Long, long, before LLMs of today).
This is why we can’t have nice things…
The primary, only, thing you could come up with is “I don’t want privacy focused translation, because AI”
Also this one is really tenuous to the point I’ll say fuck your interpretations of what I wrote. It should be: I don’t want ANY translation to inflate the browser. Publish them as a separate exe or a Firefox plugin. They bundle it because it’s a bunch of shit most people don’t need and would never seek /download.
Without realizing the the grand majority of all translation tools that don’t suck have been AI driven for like 8+ years (Long, long, before LLMs of today).
That’s presumptuous, I’m perfectly aware of it, but I’m not downloading the grand majority of translation tools with my browser.
I haven’t used translation tools once, why would it be baked in if it can be optional?
I did the same thing. I just want a product or service that doesn’t leverage AI. Mozilla’s resources are better spent improving the web.
Shame their AI question didn’t have a “my biggest concerns is companies chasing the AI buzzword with no tangible benefit”
Private, offline language translation is not “no tangible benefit”.
Neither is alt-text generation for images to assist blind people in searching the web. That’s a massive feature.
right? mozilla, you gotta focus on making a good web browser right now. not a more gimmicky web browser
I agree that’s basically what I out in the text box underneath the AI multi-select options. “We don’t want yet another annoying AI search feature or chatbot! We want a focus on useable features and security!”
I’m not anti-ai, but all signs point to the who thing stagnating, I don’t see what mozilla could contribute in the current climate.
Just make a better browser… you literally pioneered RUST
They were for years, called the servo engine. Until they killed off development of course
The result of the whole thing was project quantum. Firefox includes lots of Rust code. Servo was never intended to be a product, it always was a research platform.
Thankfully, development of Servo has been revived, and it’s now fully independent of Mozilla. I believe it’s now being stewarded by the Linux Foundation of Europe, with a lot of contributions from Igalia.
The fact that there’s no option to express my anger over the environmental cost of AI is infuriating. There is no responsible or positive use of AI when it’s accelerating the destruction of our climate.
I see a textbox saying “What do you want to see from Mozilla in the future?” You could add it there, as justification for why you want them to focus less on itThere is a text box part way through, I included my more general thoughts there
(my comment was getting rambly)
you get a star
You can submit the survey without checking any of the boxes on the AI question, just FYI.
The audacity to direct you to a donations page after you fill out their survey 😂
My brother in Lemmy, how do you think they pay their engineers?
Would you rather them try and get revenue through advertising means? Because that’s what it sounds like, no decision is a decision.
What if the whole survey is just a ploy for donations
Always has been.
gecko webview for android, better site isolation
They seem to have a foregone conclusion that AI is a positive thing, rather than something that should be eradicated like smallpox or syphilis.
I mean, generally, it is.
It’s just that the uneducated masses don’t realize that “AI” outside of today’s LLMs has been improving our technological life for well over a decade now.
And so abused and misused for just as long. LLms and the hype and slop is a relatively new thing, this is old, useful, technology.
“Eradicated” is literally impossible, entire swathes of industries can only operate at the levels of efficiency they have come to rely on because of specialized models. And have for ages now, long before the hype and slop started.
Not every model is an LLM 🤦
“Responsible use of AI” could mean things like providing small offline models for client-side translation. They’re actually building that feature and the preview is already amazing.
Not just building it’s shipping by default. That is, language detection and code that displays a popup asking you whether you want to download the actual translation model is shipping by default. About twelve megs per model, so 24 for a language pair.
IMO, there’s no such thing as responsible AI use. All of the uses so far are bad, and I can’t see any that would work as well as a trained human. Even worse, there’s zero accountability; when an AI makes a mistake and gets people killed, no executives or programmers will ever face any criminal charges because the blame will be too diffuse.
Peak hype-based ignorance 🤣
Being this confident while also not knowing how AI has been in use for more than the last decade, and going off on a rant on AI mistakes when a defining feature of AI is to solve problems that classical programming cannot, but without guaranteed results, is cringe AF
All of the uses so far are bad, and I can’t see any that would work as well as a trained human.
I’m no AI enthusiast, but this is clear hyperbole. Of course there are uses for it; it’s not magic, it’s just technology. You’ll have been using some of them for years before the AI fad came along and started labelling everything.
Translation services are a good example. Google Translate and Bing Translate have both been using machine learning neural networks as their core technology for a decade and more. There’s no other way of doing it that produces anything close to as good a result. And yes, paying a human translator might get you good results too, but realistically that’s not a competitive option for the vast majority of uses (nobody is paying a translator to read restaurant menus or train station signage to them).
This whole AI assistant fad can do one as far as I’m concerned, but the technologies behind the fad are here to stay.
There is no gray. Only black and white!
So who should be held accountable when (mis)use of AI results in a needless death? Or worse?
Let’s say a company creates an AI taxi that runs you over leaving you without legs. Who are you going to sue?
“Oh it’s grey, so I’ll have a dollar from each shareholder.” That doesn’t sound right to me.
I hate AI as much as the next AI-sceptic but that argument is just nonsense. We have plenty of machinery and other company owned assets already that could injure a human being without a direct human intervention causing the injury. Every telephone pole rotting through and falling on someone would legally be a similar situation.
Who’s getting killed because of the “translate page” button in my browser?
There are valid uses for AI. It is much better at pattern recognition than people. Apply that to healthcare and it could be a paradigm shift in early diagnosis of conditions that doctors wouldn’t think to look for until more noticeable symptoms occur.
It already has been applied to healthcare, and nearly every other industry, and has been for more than a decade.
The current LLM hype is the only thing most people know of when they hear “AI”. Which is a shame.
The “translate page” button in my browser is evil? Get a grip.
You’re going to upset a lot of chess players if you get rid of all AI.
It’s because it is a positive thing. Just because awful businesses hijacked and abused it doesn’t mean it’s all bad. Mozilla is approaching it in a positive way imo.
And what, exactly, is positive about it, that has no associated negative outcomes?
What’s positive about Mozilla having private, offline language translation?
Gee I dunno. Maybe that you get to translate web pages without sending that data to Google?
What’s positive about Mozilla using image recognition to generate alt-text for images
Gee I dunno. Maybe blind people being able to browse the web better?
Interpreting MRI scans?
Translating language?
Object detection on assembly lines?
Object detection to sort recycling?
Identifying disease markers?
Classifying data?
…etc
Things that it’s been used for for ages now, and has become ubiquitous for.
Specific to generative AI, I think client side generation can be a good thing, such as sentiment analysis or better word suggestions/autocomplete.
A number of other helpful tasks have negative outcomes, but if someone is going to use it, then I prefer they use the version of the tech that minimizes those negative outcomes. Whether Mozilla should be focussing on building that is a different matter though
AI that isn’t generative AI has a lot of positive uses, but usually that’s not what these discussions are about
Prolong your browser for as long as necessary and explore the possibility of using the internet without any web browsers. Firefox is a last stand of competition, and without choice there might as well not be browsers at all.
Is it wise to have such a complex everything-app with no end in sight? (more like, no end in site)
My dream: mozilla.exe . Too bad it takes SeaMonkey to do mozilla better than Mozilla.
Besides the already sketchy AI thing, I wonder why they need to know gender & ethnicity.
Because that’s a typical demographics question for any survey worth it’s salt?
“To disappear”
EDIT: I don’t care if you don’t agree and I’m not going to reply further. If you still did not came to the conclusion that Mozilla became just a cash grab machine by yourself, then you’re hopeless.
What’s the alternative, an even bigger cash grab machine like Google’s chromium?
Take a minute to learn the difference between mozilla.org and mozilla.com. They are very much separate, and the .com has never pretended to not be there for the money. It’s explicitly why it exists, so that the org can keep doing its thing.
