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
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.
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.
They asked and we think they shouldn’t waste money on it and everything they do should be optional and not bundled by default. Why do you think we didn’t understand?
People have been asking for translation in Firefox for years, they add it in a way that works well and is completely private, and people cry about it.
It IS optional and it ISN’T bundled by default.
If anything, they’re a bit annoying to enable, because you currently have to go into the settings to look for it.
I don’t think privacy or usability for blind people is a waste.
Sure, those two are ok, I guess, so long as Firefox doesn’t download models before I try using them for the first time. However, I emphatically don’t want and wouldn’t use and would be miffed if any tl;dring AI plugins weren’t optional. Mind you, we’re only here discussing this because we were asked about it and now there’s people replying as if ours are ludicrously luddite opinions that stand in the way of progress and Mozilla’s success.
If everything is an optional component the onboarding process might get pretty overwhelming for the average user
Well, la di fucking dah. You’re telling me they have to bundle the solution to make people realize they have problems that fit. I’d just like a lean browser that understands Ublock Origin is its primary concern and focus because it’s its main advantage at the moment. Bundle that if you’re in a bundling mood.
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.
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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.