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)

Take the survey now →

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

  • TheBlackLounge@lemm.eeEnglish
    352·
    1 month ago

    “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.

    • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
      5·
      1 month ago

      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.

    • HelixDab2@lemm.eeEnglish
      1025·
      1 month ago

      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.

        • palordrolap@fedia.io
          318·
          1 month ago

          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.

          • taladar@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            10·
            1 month ago

            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.

      • Patch@feddit.ukEnglish
        121·
        1 month ago

        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.

      • Stovetop@lemmy.worldEnglish
        101·
        1 month ago

        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.

        • douglasg14b@lemmy.worldEnglish
          41·
          1 month ago

          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.

      • douglasg14b@lemmy.worldEnglish
        42·
        1 month ago

        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