Memo details layoffs, "strategic corrections," and a desire for "trustworthy" AI.
  • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    70·
    6 months ago

    How about, and run with me on this, Mozilla stops trying to be Microsoft and Google and instead just provides the cleanest, most barebones-yet-privacy-oriented browser? Will they ever have market dominance? No, and they never will even with AI tools. Fuck AI and what it’s doing to the planet and fuck all of the capitalists enshittifying The Last Browser.

    We need a new Foundation willing to develop a fork.

  • doctorcrimson@lemmy.worldEnglish
    432·
    6 months ago

    So to recap, your choices are

    1. One of 70 flavors of Chromium including the “privacy centric” Opera who run Chinese loan shark gangs for some reason, Edge which is Microsoft Chromium and aside from hardware acceleration capabilities is pretty meh, and Brave which despite operating their own separate search engine index are one of the most likely to sell your data and/or kidneys

    2. Rapidly Enshitifying Firefox

    3. Safari - no comment

    4. Whatever the fuck Gecko is…

    • theplanlessman@lemmy.worldEnglish
      92·
      6 months ago

      RE: point 1, I’m a fan of Vivaldi, a privacy-focused highly modified chromium build developed by former Opera developers who were disillusioned by the direction that company went in.

  • hornedfiend@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    432·
    6 months ago

    why the fuck would I need an AI in a browser? 0 fucks given for this “feature”. firefox is devolving into an edge.

    • red_pigeon@lemm.eeEnglish
      241·
      6 months ago

      Nowadays we are supposed to need AI everywhere. I’m waiting for my AI bidet so that I can chat with it when I do my business.

    • UnityDevice@startrek.websiteEnglish
      13·
      6 months ago

      You already have AI in Firefox - local translations for example. Developing local AI aligns perfectly well with Mozilla’s goals, but it seems people panic as soon as they see the two letters together.

    • mods_are_assholes@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      6 months ago

      Desperate to gain marketshare, fucking samsung to apple. I hate it and I have no other options left after Firefox is enshittified

    • Flumpkin@slrpnk.netEnglish
      24·
      6 months ago

      Theoretically I can imagine AI in the browser to be awesome to combat AI on the web. Let the AI wars begin!

        • Flumpkin@slrpnk.netEnglish
          63·
          6 months ago

          I know there is currently a massive PR campaign for a power grab to consolidate control over AI software. They want to control the means of generation. Only MozillAI can save us from King GhAIdorah!

          Sorry I’m upsetting you. I know we’re entering an acceleration of technology at a time where our institutions globally are in an absolutely horrendous state. People on all sides are brainwashed as hell. The AI watchdogs are insane as well. What’s left but gallows humor? I do hold out some hope though.

          • mods_are_assholes@lemmy.worldEnglish
            31·
            6 months ago

            You cannot upset me more than the current common misunderstandings that everyone has about AI already does.

            I don’t think you understand the implications of undetectable AI to shift social conversation or the kind of world that those AI owners want to create.

            • Flumpkin@slrpnk.netEnglish
              22·
              6 months ago

              That might actually be the kind of thing where open source AI could help. At least I hope. To detect bias, lies or AI powered filtering / sorting of content.

              • mods_are_assholes@lemmy.worldEnglish
                83·
                6 months ago

                Ok so this is one of the naive thoughts that makes me upset.

                The open source community can’t even make a distro of linux that is out of the box functional for everyday users and you think somehow they are going to be able to outcompete billion dollar companies that can afford the best gear and devs?

                Look, I bought in heavy to open source early on in the 90s, and have done my best to go open source for every tool I can, but the simple fact is that even the ‘best’ open source projects are severely lacking in aspects and YOU CAN’T TRUST DEVELOPMENT OF AI TO THAT.

                Compare The Gimp to Photoshop. It isn’t even close, why? Because Adobe has a fucktonne of cash to throw at their projects and they have clear direction and motivation.

                I don’t like it

                I’d prefer a fully open source world

                But it isn’t going to happen, and open source AI will always lag behind corporate AI, and considering how fast it has been developing, even being 3 months behind renders a tool useless as an AI detector.

                We aren’t prepared for this and 90% of what everyone on the internet says about AI is poorly informed and full of confabulation, and WORST of all, when you try and explain this to them they get antagonistic.

                We have already seen the threat AI can pose in 2016 with Cambridge Analytica helping to hand trumpty dumpty the election by using AI to focus target vulnerable facebook groups.

                AND THAT AI WAS A FUCKING INFANT compared to what we have now.

                It’s going to be so bad and almost none of you have the slightest clue.

                • OhNoMoreLemmy@lemmy.mlEnglish
                  1·
                  6 months ago

                  Honestly, most of what Cambridge analytica did was blackmail, illegal spending, and collusion between campaigns that were legally required to be separate.

                  Much of the data processing/ml was intended as a smoke screen to distract from the big stuff that was known to work and consequently legislated against. The problem is that they were so incompetent that the distraction technique was also illegal.

                  Maybe the machine learning also worked, but it’s really not clear.

                • Kedly@lemm.eeEnglish
                  21·
                  6 months ago

                  See, THIS is the criticism of AI I can actually empathize with, I might even agree with it somewhat

  • maniacalmanicmania@aussie.zoneEnglish
    33·
    6 months ago

    I hope the folks laid off land on their feet.

    I’m starting to think FF is being deliberately run into the ground by the higher ups. It would be good to hear from some of the devs about their thoughts on all this.

    • deweydecibel@lemmy.worldEnglish
      17·
      6 months ago

      I don’t see them joining anything?

      I mean, let’s be real, what major function has Mozilla implemented into Firefox that hasn’t been opt-out? And no, UI doesn’t count, I’m talking features.

      The problem isn’t the existence of AI. The problem is the inescapably of it and how, under Microsoft or Google, it will harvest your data whether you like it or not. When you tell them “fuck off, leave me alone, and keep my words out of your AI’s mouth”, they’re not going to listen. Profit motive requires them to invade.

      Mozilla is a non-profit, and they’ve long been very good about letting you opt out things, and listening. I’m not worried about them putting AI into Firefox, because I can be reasonably sure it will be optional, in a way I know the others won’t.

      I’d rather they didn’t go chasing this car at all, to be honest, because they’re not likely to catch it, but whatever. They’re renewing focus on the browser and I’m taking that as a win.

      • daltotron@lemmy.worldEnglish
        31·
        6 months ago

        I can’t contest the first point cause I’m not a firefox junkie, so I won’t.

        What I will contest is that the existence of AI, or, deep learning, or LLMs, or neural networks, or matrix multiplication, or whatever type of shit they come up with next, I’ll contest that it isn’t problematic. I kind of think it is, inherently, I think it’s existence is not great. Mostly because it obfuscates, even internally, the processing of data, it obfuscates the inputs from the outputs, the works from the results. You can do that with regular programming just fine, just as you can do most of the shit that AI does with normal programming, like that guy who made a program that calculates the prices for japanese baked goods and also recognizes cancer, right. But I think AI is a step further than that, it obfuscates it more. I kind of am skeptical of it’s broad implementation.

        For trivial use cases, it’s kind of fine, but I think maybe use cases we might consider trivial, otherwise are kind of fucked, maybe. AI summary of an article? I dunno if that’s good. We might think, oh, this is kind of trivial because the user should just not really trust what the AI says, but, as with all technology, what if the user is an idiot and a moron? They might just use it to read the article for them, and then spout off whatever talking points and headlines it gives them. I can’t really think of a scenario where that’s actually a good thing, and it’s highly possible. It might make it easier to parse an article, like that, but I don’t think that’s actually a good or useful tool, it’s just presented a kind of illusion of utility, most especially because it was redundant (we could just write a summary and have it at the top of the article, like every article on the face of the earth), and it was totally beyond our control, at least, in most circumstances.

        Also, the Mozilla Foundation is nonprofit, but the Mozilla Corporation is not. The Foundation manages the Corp, which manages Firefox development. So depending on which one you’re referring to, it might be a non-profit, or it might not be. In any case, the nonprofit is a step removed from Firefox development, which I think is an important side-note, even if it’s not actually that relevant to whatever conversations about AI there might be.

  • OldWoodFrame@lemm.eeEnglish
    25·
    6 months ago

    The paradox of tech right now “we are going to build the most complex technology known to man into our product in the next 12 months. Are we hiring record numbers of people to get it done? No. We fired a bunch of people and everyone else will just have to be extremely hardcore.”

    • Blisterexe@lemmy.zipEnglish
      11·
      6 months ago

      They’re refocusing on Firefox and continuing the ai stuff they were already doing. They fireded people who were working on fediverse and metaverse platforms. Did you even read the article?

        • veng@lemmy.worldEnglish
          711·
          6 months ago

          It’s literally a marketing term for a bunch of structured algorithms at this stage - not some sentient witchcraft

            • veng@lemmy.worldEnglish
              4·
              6 months ago

              I guess the point is that its complexity is overrated, but still definitely not ‘simple’.

            • Miaou@jlai.luEnglish
              11·
              6 months ago

              … It is simple, the idea exists since 40y ago, it’s just being done at scale

              Edit: make it 80 actually

        • Miaou@jlai.luEnglish
          1·
          6 months ago

          I bet I know much more on the topic than you, but please enlighten me on which part of this is complex?

          The core concepts of DNNs are taught in high-school, and putting them together can done by a Bachelor student. Shit, people often advise writing a NN libraries as a good learning exercise when picking up a new programming language.

          I think mathematically illiterate people assume that incredible results necessarily imply complexity, but that’s simply not the case here. Or the idea that unknown things are necessarily complex, maybe.

          The main reason DNNs are popping up is because we finally have the hardware for it. And the second reason is that tech companies have the resources (both financial and in terms of available data) to throw at it.

    • Turun@feddit.deEnglish
      14·
      6 months ago

      We already have AI in Firefox. And not gonna lie, offline (I.e. absolutely private) translations for webpages is pretty neat.

      • Link@rentadrunk.orgEnglish
        3·
        6 months ago

        It’s really good but I do wish it supported more languages like Russian or Japanese. So far most of the times I have had to translate a page, Firefox didn’t support the language.

        • Matriks404@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          6 months ago

          It’s really good but I do wish it supported more languages like Russian

          It’s never too late to learn the language of enemy!

        • bean@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          6 months ago

          This. It has held back adoption for me. I want translations in my language of choice and it’s simply not one of the very few options of languages available. AI could help with this.

  • havokdj@lemmy.worldEnglish
    235·
    6 months ago

    Well guys we had a good run, free and open source software is officially over

  • Keith@lemmy.zipEnglish
    18·
    6 months ago

    They’ve said they want to do local AIs though. If that’s the case I’m all in.

  • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17·
    6 months ago

    You were the Chosen One! It was said that you would destroy the Sith, not join them! Bring balance to the browsers, not leave it in darkness!

  • AnAngryAlpaca@feddit.deEnglish
    17·
    6 months ago

    Things to add to your product when you want to look hip and trendy, but dont have any real ideas how to make your product better:

    • 1990s: visitor counter
    • 1995: Popups
    • 2000s: flash intros
    • 2005: stock photography
    • 2010: local weather widget
    • 2015: share to social media widgets
    • 2020: fullsize 4k background stock videos
    • 2024: AI assistant
      • rottingleaf@lemmy.zipEnglish
        21·
        6 months ago

        I’m not sure if you remember, but site rings were what you used instead of Google. They were useful.

        And I’ve seen some guest books with lots of people at some point in my childhood, but about half a year after that everybody firmly chose in favor of hierarchical boards.

        And I don’t share that hate for <marquee>, it served the purpose of showing you a long line in a small space, implicitly saying that it’s secondary temporary information, a bit like on TV.

        And what’s wrong with animated GIFs, animation is nice.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.zipEnglish
      31·
      6 months ago

      visitor counter

      I actually liked those.

      flash intros

      These could be used to create right atmosphere.

      local weather widget

      Back then I hated those, but maybe showing local weather on desktop is not such a bad thing.

      share to social media widgets

      Hate. Hate. Hate.

    • lud@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      6 months ago

      And yet Microsoft added a weather (and bullshit) widget to windows in like 2020

    • neutron@thelemmy.clubEnglish
      1·
      6 months ago

      It really grinds my gears. Why does my bank insist on installing an app to approve transactions, and why does that app have a huge background video playing every time i open it? It really should consist of an MFA code generator.

  • Deceptichum@kbin.social
    10·
    6 months ago

    Let me share some fun Mozilla facts about their previous CEO who has now stepped down to “executive chairwoman” last week.

    She received 6.9 million dollars in 2022 and 5 million in 2021, 3 million in 2020.

    Her replacement is an executive from AirBnB and eBay. We will find out how much both of these are earning in 2025 when they release their financial statements.

    They fired 60 staff and are adding AI to their flagship program to earn more money.

    Tell me this is a good thing.

    • spaduf@slrpnk.netEnglish
      61·
      6 months ago

      Tell me this is a good thing.

      Mozilla has long been the most ethical player in this space (while still producing SOTA ML). All of their datasets/models are open source and usually crowdsourced. Not to mention, their existing work is primarily in improving accessibility.

      ALSO, the other half of this story is that Firefox is becoming the primary focus again. Everybody’s freaking out about the AI stuff but that’s because they’re only reading the headlines. The programs they’ve shut down are things like Hubs (Mozilla’s metaverse platform), the VPN, and the sensitive data scrubber (which was using a third party service anyway).

    • FaceDeer@kbin.social
      2·
      6 months ago

      Tell me this is a good thing.

      Ok. Mozilla was spreading itself too thin, spending resources trying to compete with multiple products against established brands that were already way ahead of them. They needed to focus down onto their core product rather than frivolously cast about.

      And AI is the technology of the future, despite all the whinging and griping by commenters on the subject. It’s being incorporated into the other major browsers, it’s a must-have if Firefox is to remain relevant. I’m sure you’ll be able to turn it off in the settings if you don’t want it and if you’re really concerned about getting AI cooties there’ll be niche forks that are compiled without it.

      • Shadywack@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        6 months ago

        And AI is the technology of the future, despite all the whinging and griping by commenters on the subject.

        Yeah because we’ve never seen tech fads before heralded as the next big thing. If I could roll my eyes any harder we could harness that for power generation.

      • deweydecibel@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        6 months ago

        And AI is the technology of the future, despite all the whinging and griping by commenters on the subject.

        You have no idea, any more than the rest of us. Like, please tell me you understand “____ is the technology of the future” has been said more times than it’s ever been true.

        The idea of AI is a technology of the future, but what we have growing now is not AI, not really, and this iteration can be just as big a flop as any other technology of the moment.

      • Deceptichum@kbin.social
        1·
        6 months ago

        And the ever increasing CEO wages and hiring of AirBnB/eBay executive as CEO? Their previous CEOs salary alone could’ve covered everyone of those employees fired.

        • FaceDeer@kbin.social
          1·
          6 months ago

          That part’s not good. I was addressing the “They fired 60 staff and are adding AI to their flagship program to earn more money.” Part.

          • Deceptichum@kbin.social
            1·
            6 months ago

            I know, I was more looking at the bigger picture.

            Adding AI could be fine, but with the direction the leadership is going I can’t see it as good in this case.

      • Unruffled [he/him]@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        6 months ago

        I agree with you that Mozilla is spreading itself too thin. And don’t get me wrong, I love Firefox and am a long time user. But they do need to understand their user base better.

        They aren’t going to become a sustainable business by copying more popular browsers. It’s their differences from the mainstream that make them appealing as an alternative in the first place. I already don’t like them foisting Pocket on me, which 100% should have remained an extension. I don’t like the fact that Google is their default search engine, which goes against all their privacy messaging. I understand the reason is money, but that’s kind of the definition of being a sellout isn’t it? Their core values should always come first.

        Fact is, those employees weren’t fired for any good reason other than to hop on the latest tech trend. It’s this sort of corporate “profit before people” bullshit that will erode any goodwill that people still have towards Mozilla. I couldn’t give a fuck about adding a stupid AI driven chatbot to Mozilla, and neither, I imagine, do many of their current users. Honestly, I think “AI” has ruined the internet in a lot of ways already. It’s already had a massive negative impact on the quality of search results, across all major search engines, because of all the low quality llm content that has been produced already, and it’s only going to get worse. And you can’t trust a single thing that comes out of those models, so what is even the point of them?

        Sorry in advance for the old man rant lol.