"What Is Your Dream for Mozilla" - Mozilla is doing a survey, and it could be a good opportunity to share some of the feedback that usually gets commented here :)

Well, you have the option to elaborate otherwise. Huge effort to normalize this survey.

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.

Found the person who only reads headlines!

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!"

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.

E: idk whether you're down voting because you don't want privacy or because you don't like blind people lol

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.

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.

An engine component separable from the UI (which was XUL and thus Firefox initial advantage that gave it popularity), deeply extensible via plugins, tunable (it would be so frigging cool to be able to turn off sections of EDIT: ... what's currently called web standards, say, drop HTML5 or JS).

What it was needed for when it was popular.

Not a Chrome alternative with a different engine.

Somehow every time I mention XUL and XULRunner people mention that one can use PaleMoon or that XUL is incompatible with some security and stability changes and so on.

I know that. I don't mean literally XUL, I mean low-level access to the engine. Allowing it to be used for things like old Conkeror and such, or just customizing Firefox as deeply as it was possible in olden days.

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...

Helping blind people use computers is a good thing.

Private, offline translation is a good thing.

If they had called these features "machine learning" instead of "AI", it would make zero function difference, but you wouldn't be reacting in this manner.

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 it

There is a text box part way through, I included my more general thoughts there

(my comment was getting rambly)

you get a star

There's lot of reasons to hate AI. Spreading misinformation about renewable energy isn't one of them

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

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.

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.

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...

"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.

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 🤦

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.

Realistically, firefox will monetize advertising. But as long as they remain true to open source, we will have the forks to strip out the nasty bits. The normies will get less violated than elsewhere and people in the know will still have the dream browser.

This 500 million per year pay cut is going to hurt no matter what.

So you got this survey in an email. Was the link intended to be shared like this? Can I find the survey link somewhere on Mozilla’s own websites?

The email was through their newsletter and I would have offered to forward it, if it didn't have personal information in it. Maybe someone else who is subscribed to the newsletter can back up the claim instead?

I actually searched for the website link to put in the post body before sharing, and went through a similar thought process as yours when I didn't find it. My reasons for sharing it anyway were:

• Sometimes these emails say to not share it further, but this one didn't
• I see it shared already in a few places unofficially (Mastodon, Reddit, Twitter)
• It mentioned 'Mozilla Community' and not a more specific group, so this audience seemed appropriate
• People here might have better feedback than I could write up, so it should be a net positive for Mozilla

It would be nice if they did post about it on an official account to resolve any concerns. If it helps, it looks like "mozillafoundation.tfaforms.net" has been used for other surveys in the past and so you might find a link to that domain from an official source

edit:

their website has links to that domain based on a search of the GitHub repo

For example, the 'Submit a product here' link on this page: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/

It's also possible to submit without filling in the demographic questions if people are concerned but still want to submit

Because that's a typical demographics question for any survey worth it's salt?

There's nothing sketchy about their AI implementation.

Private, locally-run, offline language translation that doesn't send data to Google translation servers is a good thing. I don't see how that's sketchy.

Or their alt-text generation for images to assist blind people in using the web. I don't see how that's sketchy at all.

Demographic questions help us better understand the Mozilla community. All questions are optional.

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.