Gregory's ServerMozilla has a "what should we focus on?" survey where you can encourage them to focus on privacy, the open web, disinformation or open source.
Just in case anyone feels like adding another "NOT THE FUCKING AI, YOU IDIOTS" voice to the mix.
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53 comments
 @ibboard @leitzke @SuperMoosie there's no 'other' on the AI specific question, but there is a comment box after it  - Transparency into how AI systems and tools actually work Those seemed like the most anti-AI 3.     @ibboard I forgot if there was a free text field, but I should have added that it would be nice if Mozilla stayed a non profit and the corp would be completely spinned off. @ibboard I added "... give another chance to Servo", although idk how relevant that would be @RicoElectrico Private machine translation models feels like something that was being handled by transformers and embeddings before everyone got excited about "GenAI". And Common Voice is very important for people who need text-to-speech. But speech synthesis is even older than embeddings, with lots of non-GenAI techniques. Strangely, neither of those are what Mozilla promotes. They've focussed on "what if the lying chatbot was in your browser!" and "let's do 'burn the planet' but ethically". @RicoElectrico I've worked in the industry. To me, there's an important difference between Machine Learning and Neural Nets and all of the good, solid, practical, applied techniques that people were using for well scoped tasks to support users versus "what if we pretended that the advanced auto-complete based on stealing creative works was INTELLIGENT (while it lies) and then everyone anthropomorphised it and started pretending that the generated slop is actual art" that gets called "GenAI". To be clear: You can tell Mozilla that you want them to focus on TACKLING disinformation. Not focus on generating it 😁 @ibboard To them, "tackling disinformation" would mean adding phone-home misfeatures to tell you if the page you're reading is flagged as misinformation. 🤦  At least there is an option called
I think that's currently one of the best options we have for reducing AI usage. @ibboard Well, this is getting a bit of traction. Especially compared to the number of likes and boosts that I normally get 😆  Answered. Attached an email address. @ibboard Yep, I'm pretty sure there's nothing about AI in "please do something about being so dependent on Google for funding, and put the RSS icon back in the address bar".  @samwilson @ibboard yep that sounds ideal to me, the google funding is the weakest link in the whole project  @ibboard I filled it out, and appreciate that they’re at least asking. But after eliminating their advocacy division and laying off 30% of their staff while simulataneously hiring for AI positions in just this month alone… I will be surprised if they don’t just keep doing what they’re doing. But here’s hoping :kleewow: @ibboard Thanks! I submitted various variations on "No AI. Absolutely no AI. Just a good working browser please." @ibboard in a rather interesting reflection of the state of Mozilla, as I submit the form, it gives me a HTTP 500 error @danielittlewood But if you don't pay the CEO such ridiculous sums of money then they'll only go somewhere else! (Which they'll do eventually, for more money, thereby perpetuating the cycle until 90% of GDP goes on CEO salaries) @ibboard Heaven forbid Mozilla has an executive who is motivated by something other than compensation.  @ibboard In case anyone needs inspiration, I think we should tell them to make Gecko more embeddable again so other projects and browsers can reasonably implement it! Especially in the mobile Linux space and also to some extend desktop it would be cool to provide first party browsers with a way to use Gecko instead of Blink and Webkit but they dropped that support ages ago so it's insane to even attempt rn. @ibboard I don't understand how Mozilla has become so out of touch that they would think any of their userbase wants "AI", but I've done the survey  @ibboard Sadly, the message one gets shown after submitting the survey tells me that they have done their pivot to AI and that they are unlikely to hear any message that might tell them to focus on producing a good browser.  @ibboard  |
@ibboard "What is most important to you in AI?
(Select 3)"
Unfortunately, "minimizing the stupid usage of shitty AI" is not an option, not sure I can choose 3 options that really reflect my interests among the ones listed.