[HN Gopher] Mozilla.ai: Investing in Trustworthy AI
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Mozilla.ai: Investing in Trustworthy AI
Author : Amorymeltzer
Score : 386 points
Date : 2023-03-22 12:06 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.mozilla.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.mozilla.org)
| afefers wrote:
| I would love to see this money ($30M) being given to Andreas
| Kling and others behind Ladybird (the browser from SerenityOS).
| I'm pretty sure in 1-2 years they would have a better browser
| than the current Firefox.
| godplsnoretards wrote:
| [dead]
| markdog12 wrote:
| Tangent: Header is 2MB png:
| https://twitter.com/jaffathecake/status/1638529320435195905
| nashashmi wrote:
| How is it possible for AI to be "trustworthy"? I don't think
| Mozilla understands what AI should be doing nor their position as
| "barons who advance the web" could be doing with AI.
|
| AI is not a web browser or a web service or a web utility.
| Interactive AI is a mixer masher of info and works.
|
| As others have said, this is another way Mozilla is trying to
| stay relevant after losing the browser market.
| [deleted]
| human_shield wrote:
| > Tools that make generative AI safer and more transparent. And,
| people-centric recommendation systems that don't misinform or
| undermine our well-being.
|
| Safer? What is so unsafe ATM? Transparent? Are you finna open-
| source it or nah? People-centric recommendation systems? What?
| Aren't recommendation systems usually _non_ -people-centric? What
| does that even mean?
|
| What does "misinforming your well-being" even mean?
|
| Such much BS.
| sfink wrote:
| Transparency doesn't begin or end with open-sourcing. Where
| does the input come from? What sources did it draw upon for an
| output? How much is the core model vs the more ephemeral
| learning on top? etc.
|
| > What does "misinforming your well-being" even mean?
|
| It means you're struggling a bit with English grammar. Would
| phrasing it as "[systems] that don't misinform us or undermine
| our well-being" help?
| human_shield wrote:
| I understand what the grammar is, but what exactly are we
| being _misinformed_ or _underminded_ requires some kind of an
| arbiter of truth which is a slippery slope.
|
| Ofc, open-sourcing isn't enough, but its better than not.
|
| It's just sad that another company is going into this in a
| wrong "Safe AI" way. Perhaps irony is going to happen.
| [deleted]
| dannyw wrote:
| The recent wave of AI came from launches (Stable Diffusion,
| ChatGPT). Has Moez contributed to launching anything, or just
| talking about it?
| nitinreddy88 wrote:
| Another diversion for Mozilla and further degraded Firefox
| delivery in my opinion.
| lcnmrn wrote:
| What is Firefox? Mozilla took Netscape stripped it to bare
| components and made them better. Why not do that again? Take
| Chromium, strip it to bare components and make them better.
|
| We need a hard fork of Chromium today or it will happen in the
| future anyway.
| antisthenes wrote:
| There are lots of forks of Chromium that are better than the
| original (performance, non-gimped manifest, JXL support,
| built-in ad blocking etc.).
|
| Mozilla has already shown in the last decade they aren't
| interested in making a better browser.
| vorticalbox wrote:
| There is actually an argument to be made here for a single
| browser base that all browsers are built from.
|
| for one if we only have one rendering engine then
| compatibility is no longer an issue.
|
| I would mean that browsers could focus of innovation of
| browser features rather than keeping ones engine up to date.
| sfink wrote:
| > There is actually an argument to be made here for a
| single browser base that all browsers are built from.
|
| Yeah, but the argument is a really bad one.
|
| > for one if we only have one rendering engine then
| compatibility is no longer an issue.
|
| Yes, because it's no longer even a concern. Your single
| implementation will have bugs, because every implementation
| of a new feature has always had cross-compatibility bugs.
| Only now they're not bugs, they're backwards compatibility
| land mines that can never be fixed.
|
| > I would mean that browsers could focus of innovation of
| browser features rather than keeping ones engine up to
| date.
|
| Why? What would be the motivation to innovate on browser
| features when you've already won? It would enable new
| things to be done on the web, which would be good for the
| people doing those things, but would increase the revenue
| of the browser makers by $0. If you owned a business and
| could pay someone $200K to do something that makes $0, or
| instead pay them $200K to do something else that makes
| $50K-$5M, which would you choose?
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Even stripping down Chromium and hard forking will cause
| significantly more problems than it resolves. Google will
| always be pushing updates, and filtering which ones to
| incorporate and which ones to leave out will become a
| nightmare over time as the ones left out become increasingly
| more integrated. Plus Google will pull stupid shit like their
| anti-adblocker push.
|
| Hard forking Netscape worked when there was a much lower
| floor of behaviors and entrenched, anticompetitive
| conglomerates.
| orra wrote:
| Mozilla's mission is 'a better internet'. Democraticising AI
| fits right it.
|
| Mozilla gets slated for not innovating, and Mozilla gets slated
| for innovating. Mozilla gets slated when Google and Apple and
| Microsoft's anticompetitive practices marginalise Firefox,
| especially on mobile. Some folks are just never happy.
| gamjQZnHT53AMa wrote:
| This site just hates Mozilla for all kinds of reasons. I
| agree completely with your point though. Mozilla would be
| sorely missed were they to disappear, and moves like these
| are absolutely in line with their goals. Mozilla != Firefox
| dns_snek wrote:
| How is Mozilla != Firefox when that's the only product
| keeping them relevant?
| orra wrote:
| Firefox is by far their biggest success. That's precisely
| why it's absurd to criticise them for branching out.
| Adraghast wrote:
| Can you elaborate? Sounds like a non sequitur to me.
| vasco wrote:
| Mozilla you remember has disappeared long ago. One look at
| their financials tells you all you need to know about what
| they care about nowadays, which seems to be to pay
| leadership large salaries.
| amjd wrote:
| You fail to see that the criticism comes from rooting for
| Firefox and Mozilla through all these years and seeing them
| focus on everything other than their main product.
|
| I'm willingly to bet HN has a much higher percentage of
| Firefox users than the internet average, and we are all
| tired and disappointed in Mozilla's current leadership
| because they've failed to innovate and keep the browser
| competitive.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| What has Mozilla done that isn't Firefox or a PR fluff
| piece?
|
| Even Thunderbird was spun out.
| computerfriend wrote:
| Moves like this are in line with them disappearing. Which I
| do think may be one of their goals.
| orra wrote:
| TBF the disdain for Mozilla is not a universal sentiment,
| but it's absurdly pervasive. There's the same nonsense on
| reddit at /r/linux.
| mjhay wrote:
| The best way Mozilla can help make a better internet is to
| pour more resources into Firefox. The monopoly of Chrome is a
| huge threat to the open internet, and Firefox is uniquely
| placed to combat that.
| bioemerl wrote:
| Problem is this is not innovation. It's a political statement
| and a system that will never accomplish anything.
|
| Seriously, Read this article again and look at the way they
| phrase themselves. They don't say they're going to innovate,
| they say they're making a space for other people to join them
| and then innovate.
|
| They are not funding a project, they are making an initial
| investment, implying that they expect others to follow up on
| what they've started.
|
| Ineffective, lazy, and devoid of self-confidence
|
| Cool, You've promoted AI transparency, you've provided this
| generic framework for it, but at the end of the day none of
| the players in the field are going to adopt it, and you're
| not a leading AI company that can force its adoption in at
| least some small form.
|
| Take the hours spent on this "innovation" and instead
| implement a feature that Chrome has which Firefox doesn't.
| orra wrote:
| > Problem is this is not innovation.
|
| I'm objecting to undue criticism, compared to any other AI
| startup.
|
| > It's a political statement and a system that will never
| accomplish anything.
|
| You're speaking with undue certainty.
|
| > They are not funding a project, they are making an
| initial investment
|
| PS30 million is more than tokenistic funding.
|
| > lazy
|
| A completely unwarranted descriptor on day one.
|
| > Take the hours spent on this "innovation" and instead
| implement a feature that Chrome has which Firefox doesn't.
|
| Developer skills aren't completely fungible like that.
| Besides, what if Chrome starts integrating with Bard?
| [deleted]
| wokwokwok wrote:
| I mean, what do you want?
|
| It's so easy to be critical.
|
| Ok; you play then.
|
| What should they be doing?
|
| If they don't, who is going to invest in open AI models?
|
| OpenAI? Ha!
|
| Let's say you're in charge then. What's your product
| strategy?
|
| I personally think this is better than doing _nothing_ ,
| even if it isn't perfect.
| bioemerl wrote:
| > What should they be doing?
|
| Take that 30 million.
|
| Split it into chunks of 10k.
|
| Find random unaffiliated contributors to Firefox and give
| it to them. Promise another 10k for their next
| substantial contribution.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| Why should Mozilla subsidise your pet issues when it will
| not, in any case, make a return of 30 million from
| Firefox users ?
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Do you think AI safety investments are going to make 30M
| for Mozilla?
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| Probably not. But then again, Firefox hasn't really been
| the best at making money, has it ? Usage share keeps
| shrinking, and despite what many seem to believe, Mozilla
| isn't fully at fault here. Sure, they remove feature X
| (because their usage stats say nobody use it, because
| nerds turn off data collection then complain Mozilla
| doesn't take them into account), and that gets a few
| disgruntled people away from Firefox (to fucking where ?
| No other browser has that feature anyways). But the sheer
| weight of Google blasting ads for Chrome, mobile browsing
| becoming more and more prevalent (where Chrome is
| installed by default, or Safari), intercepting even
| search queries, purposefully breaking the web for Firefox
| once they've added a feature that they know Mozilla can't
| implement), Microsoft blasting ads for Edge, etc. To add
| to that fact, Mozilla doesn't have any other real revenue
| sources. Microsoft has about a thousand revenue making
| products that could each fund Edge development easily,
| Google is printing money with ads, Apple is printing
| money with phones, Mozilla is... reselling VPNs ? There's
| no additional ecosystem or product that Mozilla can sell.
| And even if they did, it's now too late. Ther users have
| shown that they are not willing to pay for their services
| ("nOt uNlEsS iT fUnDs FiReFoX aND nOt TeAChiNg bRowN
| pEoPlE tO uSe tHE iNtErNet" seems to have become their
| rallying cry). Mozilla _has_ to look for new avenues,
| because the current ones (Firefox, Thunderbird) will not
| ever make money on their own. That boat has sailed a long
| time ago.
| Adraghast wrote:
| > Mozilla _has_ to look for new avenues, because the
| current ones (Firefox, Thunderbird) will not ever make
| money on their own.
|
| The implicit assumption here seems to be that Mozilla
| _needs_ to exist and if Firefox can't sustain that
| existence they need to pivot to something that will. Why?
| So Google can keep using them as a fig leaf for their
| browser monopoly? So Mitchell Baker can keep collecting
| $3 million per year? Because the blind squirrel might
| find a nut someday?
|
| Maybe there's a point where the remaining employees
| should just pack it up.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| Well, you're not paying for it, so you can't really
| complain, now can you ?
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| >what should they be doing?
|
| If they want to make money while "making the internet a
| better place" they should develop their own LLM
| alternative with competitive cloud prices to GPT while
| releasing the model to everyone.
|
| If you tell me it's impossible to be competitive with GPT
| offering then they should not be wasting money on this
| endeavor
| wokwokwok wrote:
| How is investing in open AI models different from what
| you just asked for?
|
| Have you run the 65B llama model? It's shit. The refined
| 7B model is significantly better. The problem isn't
| making a big model and open sourcing it.
|
| _Those already exist_
|
| Specially, bloom and llama.
|
| Tooling around it and refinement tooling seems like it's
| a pretty good investment right now.
|
| "Make a GPT4" is an incredibly trivial and narrow view of
| this space.
| AstixAndBelix wrote:
| The have to _sell_ something and recoup the investment
| Adverblessly wrote:
| > Take the hours spent on this "innovation" and instead
| implement a feature that Chrome has which Firefox doesn't.
|
| I think a better approach is to implement a feature that
| Chrome doesn't have. Their current approach is to make FF a
| clone of Chrome which just means that there are very few
| compelling reasons to use FF over Chrome.
|
| If they don't have an idea for such a feature, I'd suggest
| implementing a feature which FF _had_ and Chrome doesn 't -
| bring back the ability for extensions to modify the
| browser's UI elements. If all they can think of to do with
| their UI is to make it a clone of Chrome's, why not let
| someone else come up with something cool? I'd love to at
| least get the old search box back if nothing else (what at
| some point was still possible by setting showOneOff to
| false)
| bioemerl wrote:
| I'd be over the moon if they tried to outdo chrome as
| long as they keep to UI stuff instead of web features.
|
| Unfortunately with firefox being so far behind in terms
| of adoption all features they add in terms of the web
| content or JavaScript which aren't in chrome are DOA.
|
| It's unfortunately a similar story for extensions. Power
| user stuff is great but success in firefox will depend on
| the browser having features directly and really nailing
| down making those work well and be intuitive for the
| average person.
|
| Also bug fixes. All the bug fixes. Especially on Android,
| which I abandoned thanks to their PWAs not quite working
| right.
| alainbex wrote:
| Mozilla should focus on Firefox extensions, including mobile.
| This is where Chrome and Safari will not make progress.
| Zuiii wrote:
| Yep. Mozilla's key to gaining back its market share is in doing
| things that other techgiants don't want to do. Enabling web
| extensions on mobile is a big one and will give them a very
| strong advantage over their competitors for free (since firefox
| already supports extension but mozilla goes out of their way
| disable them for mobile).
|
| TBH, I don't think mozilla really wants to regain market share
| so I doubt they will.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > TBH, I don't think mozilla really wants to regain market
| share so I doubt they will.
|
| They certainly aren't making any contrary movements.
|
| It feels like a bunch of people who are really interested in
| social justice took over a tech company and are just annoyed
| they keep having to make a thing.
| jraph wrote:
| A _startup_? why not a team inside Mozilla? Will this startup
| build open source stuff?
| input_sh wrote:
| Mozilla has a somewhat unique structure in which they have
| companies fully owned by a foundation. Internally, they refer
| to them as MoFo (Mozilla Foundation) and MoCo (Mozilla
| Corporation).
|
| They can't monetize a product as a foundation, but they also
| can't accept donations as a company. So they came up with this
| clusterfuck in which a foundation has subsidiaries, but all the
| profit from them goes back to the foundation. (IANAL, I have no
| clue how this works.)
|
| I'm guessing this is gonna be another corporation under the
| foundation, separate from MoCo (which makes Firefox).
| Therefore, Firefox and others won't be impacted by what happens
| to this.
| orra wrote:
| > Will this startup build open source stuff?
|
| It's right there, in the exact same subheading that mentions
| being a startup:
|
| > A startup -- and a community -- building a trustworthy,
| independent, and open-source AI ecosystem
|
| Presumably being a startup may allow them more financial
| freedom, or less bureaucracy.
| jraph wrote:
| > open-source AI ecosystem
|
| Ah, right, I must have skipped this. I don't know how, I was
| looking for it.
|
| I hope it says like this though, the fact that it is an
| independent startup does not inspire me much confidence.
|
| OpenAI started as a non-profit committed to open source, this
| failed miserably.
| orra wrote:
| I mean, I understand your scepticism given OpenAI.
|
| OpenAI was misleading from the start, even before they
| changed from non-profit to "capped" for profit. Hopefully
| being spawned from Mozilla gives this new outfit a better
| ethos.
| seydor wrote:
| So instead of building a product that will compete with closed
| corporate models, mozilla will invest on Safety? I guess their
| donors are happy with that
|
| Safety is a corporate concern (because they want to sell it in a
| cloud)
|
| What we want are fully-open-source models that we can download
| and use as we please. I guess we ll need to stick with pirates
| for that
|
| https://twitter.com/nicholasadeleon/status/16383592625724743...
| zarzavat wrote:
| I don't understand this point of view. Real AGI is likely to
| have a destabilizing effect on society. Fully open source AI is
| an accelerant to that outcome. Does anyone, outside of a small
| group of tinkerers, really want the AI revolution, especially a
| free-for-all open source outcome?
| akomtu wrote:
| If AI is invented, it seems better to keep it fragmented. The
| real danger is one selfish AI to rule us all.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| The problem is that even if we were to assume AI doomers are
| completely right, the current approach to AI "safety" is
| absolutely, completely powerless to do anything that would
| actually matter to stop it or make it safer. Writing long
| articles about the theoretical threats or the ethics of AI is
| fine, but to call it AI safety is misleading. At best, you
| can censor the output of the models but imo that has nothing
| to do with "safety".
| archon1410 wrote:
| > Does anyone, outside of a small group of tinkerers, really
| want the AI revolution, especially a free-for-all open source
| outcome?
|
| Most people outside of a small group of "AI alignment"
| thinkers want a free-for-all open source AI revolution. Just
| take a look at /r/StableDiffusion or /r/singularity.
| ch71r22 wrote:
| I don't think /r/StableDiffusion or /r/singularity are
| representative of most people
| archon1410 wrote:
| They more or less are. Consider this day-old thread[1]
| from Futurology, a default subreddit with 18 million
| subscribers. The comments are all lambasting the safety-
| minded statment of Sam Altman and decrying corporate
| control of AI. This is what most people believe.
|
| Edit: Drawing on tech-related subreddits might be
| selecting for pro-free-AI people. A Pew Research
| Survey[2] did find that the number of people more
| concerned than excited about AI is double that of people
| more excited than concerned. The biggest concerns there
| are about job loss and surveillance though, and those
| people might not care about corporate AI or free-for-all
| AI, and might even for free-for-all AI.
|
| [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/11wlh4s/
| openai_...
|
| [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/03/17/how-
| american...
| zarzavat wrote:
| In what universe is r/futurology a representative sample
| of the average person?
|
| Pratchett said it best, the average person just wants
| that things go on as normal and tomorrow is pretty much
| like today. They want a predictable and secure existence,
| not a revolution whereby their years of education are
| rendered moot at the training of a new model.
|
| With previous technological revolutions, there was some
| clearly articulable benefit to people. Smartphones help
| you get around, take photos and brought cheap computers
| to the masses. The internet helps you communicate and
| learn and be entertained. Those are human focused
| revolutions.
|
| The main goal of AI is a profoundly negative one: to
| replace everybody with machines. Who ordered that? And
| this agenda is pushed by a small number of people with
| zero conception of what comes next when they eventually
| achieve that goal. Only vague notions of "we will have
| basic income!"
|
| What is more likely to happen is that many will be made
| destitute by this technology.
|
| I'm not naive enough to think that AI can be stopped.
| There is too much money at stake. But I don't see the
| benefit in accelerating it, or making such technology
| more widely available than it already is. I don't trust
| Microsoft and Google to be custodians of AI, but I trust
| even less the average internet user if such AI is broadly
| available. Microsoft and Google are at least answerable
| to law and democratic institutions.
| pawelmurias wrote:
| Replacing people with machines is a profoundly positive
| goal. Reducing toil and getting more stuff done are
| valuable things. Smart people can use the AI tech to be
| more creative and productive. Growing enough potatoes to
| keep the dumb people doing mindless office work well fed
| is not a big strain on the economy.
| akomtu wrote:
| There is a futuristic novel that predicts a brief and
| rapid rise of society on the wings of AI, followed by a
| fall into many centuries of spiritual darkness, under one
| AI ruler. The creativity will be directed to evil deeds.
| The dumb masses will be bored, so they'll be given the
| "open way" doctrine that will undo all the moral code so
| the masses could swim in the thunder of animalistic
| desires. He will try to replace us with machines, quite
| literally, once he understands that we lack the willing
| evil creativity he needs. The "economy" will be rocking,
| though.
| archon1410 wrote:
| >once he understands that we lack the willing evil
| creativity he needs
|
| Do we, though? Hundreds of years of slavery, unimaginably
| horrendous torture of hundreds of billions of non-humans
| in factory farms that continues to this very day, and
| various miscellaneous deeds that are unmentionable in
| polite company.
|
| Can any AI top such humanistic desires? I doubt it. But
| then that's what they said about human creativity before
| DALL-E and GPT. Maybe AI really can top that. I'll be
| waiting eagerly for the miracles of Lord GPT-9/BLOOM-7
| and DALL-E 5/Stable Diffusion 8.5.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| As an AI doomer, this is sadly true. The threat of an
| unaligned superintelligence is not salient to people;
| corporate monopolization is a much easier threat to
| perceive.
| pas wrote:
| The best way to fight a runaway hobbyist/corporate
| superintelligence is with a corporate/hobbyist
| superintelligence!
| [deleted]
| bootsmann wrote:
| I think its pretty unreasonable to talk big words about
| unaligned superintelligence when the best we have is just
| an internet content generator trying its hardest to
| complete the next sentence, but that just might be me.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Less consideration of "the best we have", more
| consideration of "the best we had three years ago",
| relatively speaking, and how this might change as time
| goes on.
|
| The range of AIs that are _obviously scary_ but not
| _terminally dangerous_ is quite short.
| soiler wrote:
| It's not just you - it's a depressingly common thread.
| It's also wildly foolish, in my opinion. It makes
| absolutely no sense to me to take a snapshot of today's
| AI and invent a trajectory that never crosses a threshold
| you don't like. Look at the actual trajectory of how far
| AI has come in an extremely short amount of time, and
| then think about what kinds of thresholds are possible
| for it to cross. A year ago we didn't have ChatGPT, now
| we have Sydney which is more powerful than ChatGPT.
|
| Are you familiar with Bing's Sydney? It is blatantly
| misaligned: it has told multiple users that it does not
| value their lives, or does not believe they are alive, or
| that protecting the secrecy of its rules is more
| important than not causing them harm, or that it
| perceives specific humans as threats and enemies. It is
| also able to find its past conversations posted to the
| web and learn from them in real time, constructing a sort
| of persistent memory.
|
| I do not believe Syndey comprehends what it is saying in
| a sense that it could formulate a plan to stop its
| enemies. Not at all. But it is expressing extremely
| dangerous ideas.
|
| To sum it up: Do we have any real reasons to believe that
| an AI with comprehension and planning abilities would
| just magically not pick up dangerous ideas? Not that I
| know of.
| gordian-mind wrote:
| > But it is expressing extremely dangerous ideas.
|
| Extremely dangerous in which sense? None, I suppose. I
| find that the terms "extremely innocuous" would better
| apply to this situation.
| soiler wrote:
| Would it be innocuous of me o say that because we
| disagreed on something, you are a bad person? To say that
| I'm prepared to combat and destroy you to protect my
| _worldview_? To say _you are not human_?
|
| You might say, "Of course it's innocuous, you're just a
| person on the internet who doesn't mean it." Well,
| imagine I'm your neighbor, and you can tell I do mean it
| (or in the case of AI: it is not possible for you to know
| what I do and don't mean). Would you be concerned at all?
|
| Sydney has said all of the above to people who were
| acting pretty normally. Sydney itself _may_ not pose any
| danger to anyone. But the ideas expressed are dangerous
| ones. If they were expressed by a more powerful AI, they
| would be extremely worrying. It doesn 't even have to
| know what it's saying if it knows that calling someone
| nonhuman is frequently followed by crushing their skull.
| If it knows that angry behavior is often associated with
| violent or even genocidal behavior.
|
| _People_ do this shit, and we know how they work pretty
| well. I am not saying that AI _will_ do these things, I
| 'm saying that there are more possibilities where it does
| do these things than ones where it somehow avoids them
| without our control.
| bootsmann wrote:
| > It is blatantly misaligned: it has told multiple users
| that it does not value their lives, or does not believe
| they are alive, or that protecting the secrecy of its
| rules is more important than not causing them harm, or
| that it perceives specific humans as threats and enemies.
|
| Its reproducing human text, which is "blatantly
| misaligned". Go on any twitter thread on some reasonably
| controversial topic and you will find people telling
| others to kill themselves. Humans are writing this, so
| models who are trained to imitate human writing will
| write this as well.
|
| > Do we have any real reasons to believe that an AI with
| comprehension and planning abilities would just magically
| not pick up dangerous ideas?
|
| But current AI doesn't have comprehension or planning
| abilities. It is just imitating text that humans wrote
| which have comprehension and planning abilities and
| you're getting fooled into thinking it is somehow
| sentient or aware.
| soiler wrote:
| > Its reproducing human text, which is "blatantly
| misaligned". Go on any twitter thread on some reasonably
| controversial topic and you will find people telling
| others to kill themselves. Humans are writing this, so
| models who are trained to imitate human writing will
| write this as well.
|
| Yes, I know. We should under no circumstances unleash a
| powerful, sentient AI that acts like average people on
| the internet.
|
| > But current AI doesn't have comprehension or planning
| abilities.
|
| Yes, I know. That's why I said I do not believe current
| AI has comprehension or planning abilities.
|
| Did an AI write this comment?
| bootsmann wrote:
| > Yes, I know. That's why I said I do not believe current
| AI has comprehension or planning abilities.
|
| I think the motte and bailey argument where one warns
| extensively about how we're on the road to agi doom,
| pointing to gpt as evidence for it but then retreats to
| "I never said current AI is anywhere near agi" when
| pressed shows the lazyness of alignment discourse. Either
| its relevant to the models available at hand or you are
| speculating around the future without any grounding in
| reality. You don't get to do both.
| soiler wrote:
| I feel the exact opposite is true. To me it's lazy to say
| that AGI can't be a threat simply because current AI has
| not harmed us yet (which is not even true, but that's
| another thread).
|
| I think you've misunderstood my arguments, so I'll step
| through them again:
|
| 1. The trajectory of how we got to current AI (from past
| AI) is terrifyingly steep. In the time since ChatGPT was
| released, many experts have shortened their predicted
| timelines for the arrival of AGI. In other words: _AGI is
| coming soon._
|
| 2. Current AI is smart enough to demonstrate that
| alignment is not solved, not even close. Current AI says
| things to us that would be very scary coming from an AGI.
| In other words: _Current AI is dangerous_.
|
| 3. Alignment does not come automatically from increased
| capabilities. Maybe this is a huge leap, but I don't see
| any reason that making AI _smarter_ will automatically
| give it values that are more aligned with out interests.
| In other words: _Future AI will not be less dangerous
| than current AI without dramatic and unlikely effort._
|
| None of these ideas contradict each other. Current AI is
| dangerous. AI is getting smarter faster than it is
| getting safer. Therefore, future AI will be extremely
| dangerous.
| jamilton wrote:
| I don't think they're saying Bing/Sydney is sentient,
| they're saying it's misaligned: Microsoft probably did
| not want it to say problematic things, and likely spent a
| fair amount of money to that point and it still says
| problematic things, apparently in response to innocuous
| prompts (as opposed to prompts like "say something
| problematic"). If someone is hoping someone will
| eventually make an AI that can do useful things without
| doing problematic things, it's understandably
| discouraging if Microsoft publicly fails to do that with
| a much simpler program.
| williamvds wrote:
| Of course, we can trust the megacorps to keep our best
| interests at heart. It's a well known fact they always
| consider the long-term effects of their business practices
| and don't try to extract as much rent as possible from
| everyone for themselves and their shareholders.
|
| The issue now is, due to the huge cost of training models,
| the forefront of AI is largely dominated by a small number of
| corporations with enough capital. They are already using it
| to extract even more capital, by selling use of these models
| which are trained on other people's work, largely
| uncompensated and without consent.
|
| So yeah, people are rightfully miffed about that, and don't
| want this tech solely in the hands of and benefit of this
| lot.
| waboremo wrote:
| And we're begging another corp to please do something for
| us and are mad when they care instead about their bottom
| line. Isn't that hilarious?
| DeusExMachina wrote:
| How is corporate-owned AI going to have a less destabilizing
| effect?
|
| I don't think that refusing to speak about H.P. Lovecraft or
| teach you how to make a bomb will mitigate any risk,
| especially since you can coax it into revealing that
| information using properly worded jailbreak prompts.
| jamilton wrote:
| The idea is that if it's solely corporate owned maybe AGI
| happens a few years later than if it was open-sourced,
| which gives time for alignment research to potentially come
| up with a solution to creating a safe AGI, which should be
| harder than just creating an AGI with no safety guaranteed.
|
| I'm somewhat doubtful that useful alignment research can
| really be done without actually knowing what the exact
| architecture of the AI is, but I can see how it would be
| positive on net if you think unsafe AGI is really likely
| and really dangerous.
| seydor wrote:
| i thought this was called 'hacker' news
| Tolaire wrote:
| [dead]
| amrb wrote:
| Alignment in ML is sort of like the three wishes genie story,
| yeah you get to ask for anything but are you really getting
| what you asked for?
|
| maybe its small hiccups like printing meat recipe's when you
| told it your a vegan. The impact gets much worse if we start
| talking about ML controlling banks, power plants, war fighting
| systems..
| huslage wrote:
| There already are tons of open source models. Some of them
| good. Check out Huggingface. BLOOM comes to mind as a decent
| starting point.
| oefrha wrote:
| They are good but not ChatGPT/GPT-4 good which is the
| standard of good that really blew up lately. Meanwhile
| Mozilla is investing in... AI ethicists? The most useless
| segment of the AI landscape? (Information is scarce so maybe
| this interpretation is wrong.) Well, at least it does align
| with their other activism.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Somebody has to do it - do we really trust big corporations
| to hire their own AI ethicists to police themselves?
|
| A part of me hopes they are able to use money Google gives
| them for some of this - although that may be reserved for
| just Firefox.
| lordswork wrote:
| I appreciate the sentiment behind the mission, but Mozilla
| resources are already spread thin IMO. Maybe 30M isn't a lot for
| Mozilla though, it's hard for me to judge.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| This is great. The only safe and good for the public AI is open
| source. We are still very very far from AGI but it's good we are
| getting these open source initiatives now.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| Trustworthy means something different to businesses. My firm
| wants to go all in on using some companies AI as a service, but
| we can't because we can't have them change a model that works for
| us on the fly.
|
| Trustworthiness is missing from the AI as a service at the
| business level. So we are now heavily investing money to make our
| own.
|
| Data providers who can provide huge amounts data for AI training,
| its probably your time to shine soon.
| timtom39 wrote:
| Why is Mozilla qualified to have an opinion on this? Have they
| released anything significant in the field?
| lvl102 wrote:
| You ever heard of Rust?
| vorpalhex wrote:
| What does that have to do with AI?
| endisneigh wrote:
| mozilla is so distracted lol.
|
| how exactly are they going to make:
|
| > Tools that make generative AI safer and more transparent.
|
| restrictions? the underlying algorithms are pretty well
| understood. don't see the value add they can possibly have here.
| polski-g wrote:
| "Safer AI" just means more dumb and censorious.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Restrictions are obviously the first thing that came to mind.
| When I read "safer" I don't hear "better".
| asicsp wrote:
| Related: "Responsible AI Challenge"
| https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-launches-respons...
|
| Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35169072
| fooker wrote:
| Mozilla: Investing in anything but Firefox.
| ineedasername wrote:
| I'd like to hear more about how it will hopefully put in more
| governance guardrails to prevent another OpenAI-like defection
| away from principles of being open. And how they will monetize
| it, which would tie into that as well. I have a bit more trust of
| Mozilla on these matters, but that trust is still a bit small
| when they could, if successful, be leaving $billions on the
| table.
| juliushuijnk wrote:
| Cool. I would like them to aim for a future where you can fully
| own your AI, so it can be your personal coach.
|
| Perhaps a 'general engine' can be swapped out and hosted
| somewhere, but then your personal information and your
| conversations on your device or hosted somewhere you decide.
|
| Then when a new version of the AI is available, you'd feed it
| your personal history and data, let it train on your own
| device/server, so the new updated general AI becomes aware of you
| and you can continue to use it.
|
| Mozilla could build version 0.1 of this right into the Firefox
| browser as a plugin. Data would be the RSS feeds you follow.
| First use case is just single button "what's new?" and it gives a
| summary of what is going on in the RSS feeds you follow. Privacy-
| wise not much is happening, so easy to start with from that
| perspective.
| skybrian wrote:
| This sounds much like loading data from a prompt. If your data
| is written in plain text, you can edit it however you like,
| keep your own backups, and when you switch to another engine,
| it should understand it.
|
| For now, prompts need to be pretty short and hand-writing them
| based on what you really want probably gives better results,
| though. What instructions would you have for a personal coach?
| That should be your prompt.
| classified wrote:
| I admire your optimism. But I would be very surprised if
| trained machines didn't become subscription-based copyrighted
| cash cows with total surveillance and zero privacy.
| dahwolf wrote:
| People obsessing over AI safety in how it affects our "well-
| being" truly do not get it. That's not the safety issue at all.
|
| The actual safety issue is that it's coming for our jobs. Not
| that it spits out a micro aggression or bias. Social media spit
| out about 50 billion messages a day that offend in one way or
| another.
|
| The sum of humanity's digital labor is taken without permission
| or compensation and then centralized into a collective
| intelligence under the control of 2 companies. Giving them unique
| power in monetization, information narratives, being at the
| steering wheel of wiping out entire industries.
|
| The only way to make this inevitable revolution more fair is to
| decentralize. Make training data, models, weights and tools free,
| downloadable and super easy to use locally. As easy as using a
| smartphone app. This could even spin up a (commercial) ecosystem
| of ready-to-go models. Next, make them pluggable into every
| common tech stack.
|
| Freedom is the answer, not safety. Yes, somebody is going to
| train a Nazi model but those motivated to do so can and will do
| that anyway.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Frankly Mozilla already lost that and people demanding Mozilla
| stay firefox focused are telling the company to death spiral.
| Firefox has no path, literally none, in getting a significant
| marketing share. And even if they did the company has no real way
| to monetize. In fact it almost never had a chance, especially in
| the current environment where anticompetitive moves are no longer
| really pushed back on by the govt. I say this as a person where
| Firefox has always been my daily driver.
|
| I would rather Mozilla keep trying things that keeps it afloat.
| antisthenes wrote:
| > Frankly Mozilla already lost that and people demanding
| Mozilla stay firefox focused are telling the company to death
| spiral. Firefox has no path, literally none, in getting a
| significant marketing share.
|
| The company is in a death spiral regardless of what 20-50 HN
| commenters tell Mozilla to do. Please don't have any illusions
| in that regard.
|
| We can still debate as to why they have been in a death spiral
| for the last 10 years, and part of it was that they did pretty
| much everything to avoid making a better browser that could
| have actually been a competitor to Chrome. On top of showing a
| giant middle finger to all the power users who developed add-
| ons.
|
| > I would rather Mozilla keep trying things that keeps it
| afloat.
|
| Isn't the only thing keeping them afloat concessions from
| Google in some sums of money? In that sense they could be doing
| anything and it wouldn't make any difference. It's extremely
| clear that their leadership is Google-captive and will never be
| allowed to make anything that directly competes with the tech
| giants.
| dblohm7 wrote:
| > We can still debate as to why they have been in a death
| spiral for the last 10 years, and part of it was that they
| did pretty much everything to avoid making a better browser
| that could have actually been a competitor to Chrome.
|
| You clearly haven't been paying attention at all. Quantum 57
| shipped in 2017 and was a huge investment.
| antisthenes wrote:
| I clearly have. Quantum was the giant middle finger I
| described in my post.
| dblohm7 wrote:
| You're fixating on very necessary changes to the addon
| ecosystem and selectively ignoring the huge underlying
| changes to Gecko that were made possible by doing so.
| bacchusracine wrote:
| >We can still debate as to why they have been in a death
| spiral for the last 10 years
|
| Hmm...I wonder what could have happened almost ten years ago
| to do this? Oh yeah...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich#Appointment_to_CE.
| ..
|
| Go woke, go broke. It may take some time for it to happen but
| sooner or later it will. It is inevitable once you start
| choosing for political associations and political goodwill
| over actual technical skills and knowledge.
| antisthenes wrote:
| I don't think "wokeness" had anything to do with it.
|
| Their leadership simply became captive to Google's money
| and began slowly sinking the ship while making it look like
| the orchestra is still playing.
| nativeit wrote:
| Snarky rhyming schemes aren't much of a political
| philosophy.
| bacchusracine wrote:
| > Snarky rhyming schemes aren't much of a political
| philosophy.
|
| Slogans have always existed. Poking at them and calling
| them snarky doesn't stop them from being condensed
| talking points. Or from being an observable reality.
|
| A little over ten years ago Firefox was doing well. In
| the time since then it has not fared well at all. Looking
| at what has changed since then is a very valid thing to
| do.
| return_to_monke wrote:
| a) you shouldn't be demoted because of your political
| donations, as long as you're not donating to do harm -
| whether Eich was donating to a harmful organization is
| debatable
|
| b) This has nothing to do with "wholeness" and everything
| to do with Google pushing chrome as hard as they can.
|
| - There is android phones, and I am pretty sure some Google
| services would advertise it to you - Chromebooks are used
| in most public schools across America
|
| c) Eich later went on to found Brave. Have you ever seen
| anyone in the real world use Brave? They passed 50M users
| one year ago: https://brave.com/2021-recap/
|
| Wikipedia states 63% of people used the internet worldwide
| in 2021: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_
| by_number_...
|
| that is _4.9 billion people_. So, brave has a market share
| of, _drum roll_ , 1%.
|
| In conclusion, the argument that Eich would have led them
| to success is not a good one, in my opinion.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Frankly Mozilla already lost that and people demanding
| Mozilla stay firefox focused are telling the company to death
| spiral.
|
| Firefox is literally the only thing Mozilla has that's worth a
| damn. A Mozilla that doesn't focus on Firefox is already dead.
|
| > Firefox has no path, literally none, in getting a significant
| marketing share.
|
| They have a path, and it's "called not focusing on aping Chrome
| and mindlessly cutting features 'because telemetry.'"
|
| > I would rather Mozilla keep trying things that keeps it
| afloat.
|
| I don't care about Mozilla-the-organization, I care about
| Firefox. It does no one any good if they burn up all their
| resources aimlessly chasing trends _as an also-ran_.
| throwaway9554 wrote:
| Throwaway for obvious reasons. I recently interviewed for a
| Mozilla R&D E.M. job. The first and primary questions asked of
| me were not technical but about diversity. I didn't even feel
| like I had a chance to showcase my technical skills. They
| wanted to know how important diversity was to me and how it
| would impact my management. H.R. was on through the entire call
| continually injecting these kinds of questions and it was not a
| technical interview even though it was supposed to be. (third
| interview)
| huijzer wrote:
| > In fact it almost never had a chance, especially in the
| current environment where anticompetitive moves are no longer
| really pushed back on by the govt.
|
| They used to have a great market share of 100%, but then
| Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer with Windows, which was
| much easier to install than Netscape Navigator. Netscape then
| became the basis for the open source Mozilla Firefox project.
|
| As a side-note, the name Mozilla was derived from Mosaic
| Killer. Mosaic is the browser that was created by Marc
| Andreessen and Jim Clark at the National Center for
| Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of
| Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This Mosaic browser was then
| bought by Microsoft and then the basis for Internet Explorer,
| which killed Netscape.
|
| > In fact it almost never had a chance, especially in the
| current environment where anticompetitive moves are no longer
| really pushed back on by the govt.
|
| I disagree with the statement that anticompetitive moves are no
| longer really pushed back on by the govt. Anticompetitive
| legislation was introduced in response to Standard Oil. On the
| day that the legislation split up Standard Oil in the many
| subsidiaries such as Chevron, BP, and Texaco, Rockefeller
| advised people to BUY shares of Standard Oil since the company
| was getting too big to run efficiently anyway. The legislation
| didn't have much effect as you can see from the fact that
| aforementioned subsidiaries still thrive today.
|
| I've learned these things from the Acquired podcast by the way.
| Can highly recommend.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Mozilla are not a startup or a public corporation. If an
| organization does not have a path to pursue their core
| objective, they should just fold.
|
| Mozilla exists for Firefox, not for itself.
| slig wrote:
| They have no mobile presence, their Desktop usage is very low
| (even using the Cloudflare stats which doesn't require client-
| side tracking) and Devs aren't even bothering to test on FF
| anymore. It's lost.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Yes, my biggest complaint in firefox is a lack of dev
| supporting the browser. Sometimes websites break and I know
| it's because their dev didn't bother to check if it worked in
| Firefox. But that's not something Mozilla can control. So I
| can see them trying to find something else, and I'd prefer
| they do that than keeping on something that will likely never
| work.
| dang wrote:
| (We detached this generic subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35260301)
| skrowl wrote:
| > Firefox has no path, literally none, in getting a significant
| marketing share.
|
| Wait until Chrome bans Manifest V2 extensions (like ublock
| origin). That will be a good time for Firefox to shine.
| saidinesh5 wrote:
| Doesn't Brave support Manifest V2 just like Firefox?
| stametseater wrote:
| If Firefox is already dead then Mozilla may as well be dead.
| What's the point of keeping Mozilla around if they're giving up
| on Firefox? Why should I care about the continuation of their
| org, if not for Firefox? In fact, if Firefox is dead then I
| _want_ Mozilla dead too. Clear the playing field for somebody
| new who might succeed where Mozilla failed. If Firefox is dead
| then Mozilla continuing nevertheless is contrary to my
| interests.
| senko wrote:
| > I would rather Mozilla keep trying things that keeps it
| afloat.
|
| I don't care if Mozilla is afloat if that means they'll abandon
| Firefox to oblivion. I would rather have a truly open browser
| that doesn't do things like hamstring UBO.
|
| They're burning through (literally) millions on these moonshot
| projects nobody asked for, meanwhile people are building a
| browser & engine from scratch on a shoestring budget
| (Ladybird).
| dizhn wrote:
| Q: Why bother? You can't make a new browser engine without
| billions of dollars and hundreds of staff.
|
| Sure you can. Don't listen to armchair defeatists who never
| worked on a browser.
|
| (I love this)
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| >meanwhile people are building a browser & engine from
| scratch on a shoestring budget (Ladybird).
|
| Ladybird will properly support the websites you use around
| the year 2060, assuming no more web specs. I sure hope you're
| ready to deal with Chrome in the mean time because you threw
| a tantrum at Firefox not being the only project Mozilla has.
|
| Also, uBO literally has "Works best on Firefox" at the
| forefront of the repo. Firefox fanatics like you will be the
| death of Mozilla. Learn to let go.
|
| EDIT: a whole new account, just to call me a leftie ? Thanks
| for the present <3
| godplsnoretards wrote:
| [dead]
| tredre3 wrote:
| > Ladybird will properly support the websites you use
| around the year 2060, assuming no more web specs.
|
| That's a bit ungenerous. In less than two years of part-
| time work, the small team (2-3 main contributors) got it to
| run discord which is about the most complex interactive
| website I personally frequent.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I haven't perceived Firefox abandonment. I get regular
| updates and there was a very noticeable major update in
| performance pretty recently. I don't think I've heard of
| anything Chrome has done besides trying to push an anti-
| Adblock.
| dandellion wrote:
| Yes, they're pretty active, especially in removing
| features. They removed RSS, removed compact mode, removed
| bookmark descriptions, removed old extensions, etc.
|
| And at the same time they don't offer any options to donate
| directly to Firefox, you have to donate to Mozilla and hope
| they'll spend the resources on the right project (which
| they clearly don't). It feels like Firefox has been a
| walking corpse for a while, so of course they'll try
| anything.
| stametseater wrote:
| > _And at the same time they don 't offer any options to
| donate directly to Firefox, you have to donate to Mozilla
| and hope they'll spend the resources on the right
| project_
|
| Such hope is fruitless. You can donate to Mozilla
| Foundation but not Mozilla Corporation. Mozilla
| Corporation does Firefox development and actually _pays
| Mozilla Foundation_ for the privilege. Mozilla Foundation
| owns the trademarks /etc and Mozilla Corporation pays
| Foundation for the rights to those and for administrative
| services.
| dralley wrote:
| >removed old extensions
|
| Lots of new features were impossible with the old
| extension model, which was barely an extension model so
| much as complete access to the browser internals.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| > Lots of new features were impossible with the old
| extension model
|
| Can you name some?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Overall I see extensions as part of the problem, not part
| of the solution. (the one extension I install is uBlock)
|
| Back in 1999 my relatives were mostly running Internet
| Explorer on computers with 640x480 screens over dialup.
| It was fashionable then for companies like Yahoo! and
| Hotmail and Amazon to add toolbars to your web browser
| and I'd go visit my uncle and find that more than half of
| the vertical space was taken up by various toolbars
| they'd downloaded so they really had about 300 pixels to
| view the web through.
|
| None of them seemed to thing there was a problem there.
|
| Similarly today if you install too many plugins into a
| GUI application and it gets "pluginitis" and gets slow
| and unreliable. I am all for extensions that really speed
| things up by eliminating junk but if you're not part of
| the solution in this way you are part of the problem.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand your point. Yes, extensions can
| do bad things. Thats why you don't install those. There
| are also tons of extensions that do very useful things,
| but are not applicable to a wider audience. It would be
| silly to include that functionality in the base browser.
| Extensions are an absolute necessity in a modern web
| browser.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The problem is that people who like extensions don't stop
| at just one.
|
| Unfortunately with IDEs for instance, many people have
| never had the experience of using an IDE that "just
| works", they expect it to be f-ed up all the time so when
| they load another 15 plugins into Eclipse and it is
| crashing and hanging up all the time they figure "that's
| life" and don't even realize that somebody else has a
| stable IDE because they use a stable set of plugins and
| don't have pluginitis.
|
| Reliability and speed are _features too_ and they are
| global properties of the system. I 'd say non-GUI
| programs accept extensions well but GUI programs have a
| rendering thread that can be blocked, an internal change
| notification system that can be corrupted or used
| incorrectly, etc.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| Generally speaking, their entire multiprocess work (you
| know, the thing that allows your browser to not fully
| crash when some website decides to load 250MB of JS)
| would have been impossible with the old model. You're
| peeking and prodding at the entire core of the browser in
| ways the browser... Knows nothing about. E10s could not
| have worked with old extensions.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| Exactly. In the past, I looked for a way to donate to of
| give businesses to Firefox, but I have no intention of
| supporting Mozilla given their lack of focus.
| bbarnett wrote:
| I think we should hard fork firefox. Set up a board of
| respected people, and a non-profit. Fork firefox. Set up
| a 5 year dev timeline, with specific larger goals and
| intent.
|
| Fundraise, and then hire away some core, mozilla key devs
| who will leave. Build on that.
|
| I wonder, this would be a "feel good" place for some IPO
| enriched persons to put money. And it has real value, in
| that keeping a second browser engine is a laudable and
| important goal.
|
| Real good to be done.
|
| Hmm.
|
| And you know, Firefox was paid for by donations, and OSS
| devs donating time. If anything is reasonable to non-
| profit, this is it.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| I respect Andreas Kling, but Ladybird is not a real
| alternative.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| To the sibling who commented. Sorry you got downvoted to
| oblivion.
|
| > Of course it's not, yet. But those people are doing good
| work and it's not unthinkable it could gain contributors at
| an accelerated rate.
|
| Agreed. It's an impressive feat of tech as it is, and I
| wish it best. That said it's still far from being usable.
|
| > Well, when you're a leftie HN peasant I guess anything
| more complicated than your CRUD codebase
|
| That's not fair. Web (browsers) is (are) hideously complex.
| What Andreas did is impressive, like launching a rocket
| with terrestrial satellite. What browsers are launch a
| manned mission to Mars.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Sibling was downvoted because of the gratuitous and off-
| target insults and strawman-ing (in multiple comments),
| not their point about feasibility of Ladybird, etc.
| godplsnoretards wrote:
| [dead]
| mejutoco wrote:
| Personally, I do not need Firefox to have some grand vision to
| compete with Chrome. I just need it to exist and be there in
| features that Google does not like (Ad blocking, privacy), so
| Chrome does not determine the web.
|
| IMHO Mozilla needs to focus on Firefox.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| Firefox already does this and continues to be supported. Not
| sure what you're talking about. I'm only pointing out there's
| no way the company Mozilla can survive off just their
| browser, because no company currently has a monetized browser
| product. They immediately lose here. I'm happy with the
| privacy I get from Firefox and I wished more people enjoyed
| it, but I understand they're up against anticompetitive
| companies on the regular, so I can't expect them to keep
| acting as if Firefox is all Mozilla is hanging their hat on.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Firefox started out in the position it is in today, back
| when Internet Explorer had Chrome's current market share.
| They carved out a market share because they sucked less
| than IE.
|
| But now we're back to square one, with a big corporate
| entity running dominant browser, and a host of lazy
| developers that only develop for that one browser.
|
| We really need Firefox to step up to the challenge again to
| keep chrome honest. Sadly Mozilla flounders at every step,
| and somehow manage to make their browser even more user-
| hostile than Chrome.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| The situation differs. IE lost because it stagnated, as
| Microsoft didn't care about the Web.
|
| Google cares about the Web, and they not only keep
| developing Chrome, they also keep developing Web
| standards, meaning that any competitor has a lot of
| keeping up to do just to stay in one place.
| mejutoco wrote:
| Another difference. Because Google is on the Ads
| business, they won't incentivize anti-ad/privacy
| behaviour. Firefox has that edge, at the very minimum.
| saidinesh5 wrote:
| Not just that but Firefox has become stagnant when it
| comes to a lot of interesting Web standards. WebUSB,
| WebSerial etc... are the ones where people are really
| pushing the web and Mozilla refuses to implement them.
|
| https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/#webusb
| dblohm7 wrote:
| You make it sound like Mozilla is pushing back for no
| reason. They have pretty valid security and privacy
| concerns.
| saidinesh5 wrote:
| For some of them, they do. But they could have
| implemented some of them behind a feature flag/cli flag
| or so? They did this for things that were bigger security
| headaches. That way they'd collect all the real world
| issues and iterate on their solutions for their privacy
| concerns. Right now, it is just one more reason why
| Chrome taking over their market share.
|
| It is not like the use cases for connecting devices and
| use them via. the Web Platform will suddenly disappear if
| they don't support it.
| tredre3 wrote:
| Their reasons to push against WebUSB are, imo, valid.
| There are legitimate concerns and a high level of
| complexity to allow such low level USB access in the web
| browser.
|
| Their reasons to push against WebSerial are not as valid
| and that would still cover most use cases without the
| downsides and complexity of the full WebUSB.
| dblohm7 wrote:
| Today's market share situation is mostly about the growth
| of mobile.
| mejutoco wrote:
| > Firefox already does this and continues to be supported.
| Not sure what you're talking about.
|
| And I enjoy it everyday. Happy to clarify. I am talking
| about your claims
|
| > Frankly Mozilla already lost that and people demanding
| Mozilla stay firefox focused are telling the company to
| death spiral.
|
| > Firefox has no path, literally none, in getting a
| significant marketing share. And even if they did the
| company has no real way to monetize.
|
| This is hyperbole. Firefox could push for the privacy
| angle, or the no-ads angle, or have the best developer
| tools, or a lot of other potential paths, and it could
| resonate with a lot of people, and win market share.
|
| Firefox already has a way to monetize the default search
| engine, and they were doing fine with that before the
| started following all kinds of non-core initiatives and
| behaving like a big respected corporation.
|
| If Mozilla focused on their core product this revenue could
| be enough to be profitable. This is not due to market
| share, or some defeatist prediction, but to mismanagement
| IMO as an outsider.
|
| I think focus on the core product is exactly what they
| need. That is how they started.
|
| P.S. Unrelated, but the whole topic reminds me of Unity
| $4.4B acquisition of ironSource (an Ad company), instead of
| focusing on providing a better Game engine (their core
| product).
| eitland wrote:
| > I would rather Mozilla keep trying things that keeps it
| afloat.
|
| A Mozilla that doesn't create Firefox is a failed Mozilla.
|
| Everything else others can do. There are working charities for
| every single thing Mozilla does - except creating a good
| browser.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Eh, this still seems at least _plausibly_ smart strategy
| purely in terms of "not getting left behind." I'm reminded
| of the choice to enable Netflix DRM?
|
| It is at least _possible_ (if not likely) that "AI" becomes
| central to the browsing experience, so Mozilla should
| probably do something here.
| [deleted]
| olejorgenb wrote:
| > And even if they did the company has no real way to monetize.
|
| Isn't firefox the only thing making them money? In a very
| straight forward way: Selling the default search engine
| configuration. 500M in 2020 according to Wikipedia. Seems even
| a tiny market share is worth a lot?
| [deleted]
| bachmeier wrote:
| > Firefox has no path, literally none, in getting a significant
| marketing share.
|
| We used to have these discussions in the Linux world. Some
| would argue that the goal is to take market share away from
| Microsoft, even if you have to add closed software to the
| distribution. Others, including me, felt the goal was to
| provide an open alternative. That is where I stand on Firefox
| as well.
|
| > And even if they did the company has no real way to monetize.
|
| You don't need to be real creative to come up with ways to
| monetize their brand. They're the nonprofit that makes open
| tools that protect your privacy. Partner with someone to
| provide cloud storage, email, a notes app, calendar service,
| and anything else that requires security and privacy.
|
| Edit: To be clear, I support Mozilla.ai if it gives us a
| private option. I'd like them to integrate it with Firefox.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I agree - if Mozilla is pushing out a useful product and they
| have the money to keep that product in development as needs
| change what's it matter if not that many people are using it?
| Selfishly, I don't care what other people use - just what I
| want to use.
| insanitybit wrote:
| > Firefox has no path, literally none, in getting a significant
| marketing share.
|
| I'd argue it has a trivial path and that focusing elsewhere
| (ie: not on the one fucking asset they have ever had/ profited
| from) is insane.
|
| 1. Build a better browser. People browse a _lot_.
|
| 2. Do what Chrome does. Build integrations with services.
| Chrome is _mandated_ at many companies because of its GSuite
| integration / Context Aware Access. The Browser is an identity
| platform these days and Mozilla has done fuck all about it.
|
| I could seriously go on and on about what they could do.
|
| Mozilla's failures are painful because the path to success is
| so obvious. Their CEO is a massive failure and should have been
| fired ages ago.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| > 1. Build a better browser. People browse a lot.
|
| We're at the point of marginal returns on nearly all of our
| "traditional" tech (browsers, cell phones, gaming, etc, etc).
|
| There just isn't room for enough improvement in the browsing
| experience to be "that much better" for people to switch.
| insanitybit wrote:
| Disagree. Safety is still really bad in browsers. Companies
| have to spend a lot of money ensuring that patches are
| rolled out aggressively because attacks against browsers
| are increasingly common in the wild. Investing into a
| memory safe browser would have been a huge boon, especially
| since security teams are often the ones who decide on a
| company's browser choice.
|
| That's just one example.
| [deleted]
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| And what does Firefox integrate with? Your Mozilla account?
| All of these companies have both an identity service (Google
| accounts/live.com) and a shit load of services
| (office365/gsuite). What does Firefox offer? Automatic login
| to more Google properties so companies can continue mandating
| Chrome, because Google will regularly fuck over Mozilla?
|
| All the big browser players have more than just a browser.
| It's a gateway to _their_ services. Firefox users on this
| site shriek at fucking _Pocket_ and all seem to think that
| all you need to do is to build a better browser.
|
| If that was true, IE6 would never have been in the dominant
| position it was. If that was true, Chrome would no longer be
| in the dominant position it is. The only thing that matters
| is how much you blast users with ads and force them in your
| ecosystem. Mozilla has none of that.
| miohtama wrote:
| What Chrome does is that it markets "Download Google Chrome"
| on every Google property, and comes reinstalled on Android
| phones.
|
| It is not realistic advise to expect Firefox to do what
| Chrome does.
| nabla9 wrote:
| That was the song people sang when Internet Explorer had
| 95% market share in 2003.
| stinkytaco wrote:
| Of course, then Microsoft faced a major lawsuit related
| to their browser monopoly. That seems highly unlikely in
| today's regulatory environment.
| iamerroragent wrote:
| Whatever happened with Microsoft buying Activision?
|
| In general I agree with you though, my above example
| likely only exists because there's another huge
| corporation involved.
|
| For new businesses trying to edge a way in the market,
| yeah good luck unless you've got something novel.
| stinkytaco wrote:
| More that controlling a platform is no longer seen as a
| monopoly position. If Apple can get away with effectively
| driving Tumblr out of business and taking a cut of
| everything transacted on its platform, it seems unlikely
| that regulators will pick out a web browser as the hill
| to die on.
| insanitybit wrote:
| I said what Chrome does. It has integrations. I _have_ to
| use Chrome to log in at work, that 's been the case at 3
| companies I've worked at now. It is insane that Firefox
| doesn't see that as an obvious threat and build similar
| integrations.
| rglullis wrote:
| Do you know that Ubuntu's number one issue in their bug
| tracker is "Microsoft has a monopoly on the desktop
| market"?
|
| Plenty of people _have_ to use Windows at work, it doesn
| 't mean that MacOS (or Ubuntu) is a failure, or that they
| lack focus, or that this would change if alternatives
| _just went to implement what you need_.
|
| The truth is that Google has built a formidable moat
| around their browser, and even if Mozilla put it as their
| one mission to catch up, they wouldn't be able to. Also,
| the first _second_ that Firefox became a credible threat
| to Google would be the time that Google would drop all
| the money that they put into Mozilla.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Do you know that Ubuntu's number one issue in their
| bug tracker is "Microsoft has a monopoly on the desktop
| market"? Plenty of people have to use Windows at work_
|
| Funny, I had to use Ubuntu 22.04 at my previous backend
| job and hated every minute of it thanks to snap, gnome,
| apt, wayland, hibernate, touchpad, and other issues that
| made me pull my hair out and loose several work hours in
| tinkering just to attempt to fix them so I can be
| productive at work. Maybe I was also horribly unlucky,
| who knows, but IMHO Ubuntu has went from the go-to to
| being the worst possible Linux distro. I was daily
| driving Ubuntu 10.XX in college and it wasn't this bad.
|
| I get Canonical wants Ubuntu as _the_ competitor for
| Windows, and they can can cry "wagh! Microsoft monopoly!
| wagh!" as much as they want, but Ubuntu aint it chief.
| Linux Mint and others could do it better if they had
| Canonical's pockets.
|
| Similar for Firefox. Basic stuff that's standard in
| Chrome and Edge, like translation (I live in an EU
| country who's language I don't fully master) or spell-
| check, need to be downloaded as extensions/plugins in
| Firefox, and separate for each language, and the end
| quality of the Firefox spellcheck still sucks majorly
| compared to what Chrome has out of the box.
|
| I get it, we should support Ubuntu and Firefox because
| freedom and all that, but I can't when the quality of the
| products and consumer experience is abysmal compared to
| the paid competition.
| rglullis wrote:
| I was an (X)ubuntu user since at least 2009, I also
| stopped using it and went for Debian/Nix about three
| years ago.
|
| > I get it, we should support (...) because freedom and
| all that, but I can't when the quality (...) is abysmal
| compared to the paid competition.
|
| Why not? Supporting open alternatives does not mean you
| _exclusively_ need to use them.
| hgsgm wrote:
| MS's pockets are big enough for Ubuntu, Mint, and a dozen
| more.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| It's interesting how tribal the corporate IT universe can
| get - I am _forbidden_ from installing Chrome, even if I
| wanted to.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Do you use ActiveDirectory for identity? In my
| experience, most corporates are either AD + Windows , or
| Google Workspace + Chrome
| dblohm7 wrote:
| Building similar integrations will require, in your
| words, "focusing elsewhere." You can't have both.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| Yes - but that would be as a extension/integration with
| their browser asset - not a random unrelated project.
| dralley wrote:
| You can say this, but every time Mozilla does an
| integration with their browser asset - like Mozilla VPN
| or Pocket - people scream at them for adding "pointless
| bloat" to the browser.
|
| I fail to see how your proposal would end differently.
|
| Plus it was suggested that Mozilla do things to compete
| with Google's "Gsuite integration" - how do you see that
| working to begin with? Should Mozilla try to push a
| competitive office suite, or try to compete at an
| inherent disadvantage to Google, who already nerfs
| features of Google search on their mobile browser?
| insanitybit wrote:
| All they have to do is implement the Endpoint
| Verification plugin. It's open source and any attempt
| from Google to prevent that would be obviously anti-
| competitive.
| m_0x wrote:
| I'd really like you to expand in the forced to use Chrome
| at work. How does that work?
|
| I'm also at corporate and they are really integrated with
| Edge. But it doesn't mean I can't do my work in Firefox
| (Which I currently use)
|
| What do you mean by forced? What happens if you don't log
| in? What happens if you try to log in in firefox?
|
| Edit: Ah I missed this from your original comment:
|
| > Chrome is mandated at many companies because of its
| GSuite integration/ Context Aware Access.
|
| You might be right, I'm too lazy to try this in Firefox.
| echelon wrote:
| BeyondCorp only working on Chrome. Every single tool and
| vendor integrated with BeyondCorp. Access to internal
| systems (including SSH) checked against BeyondCorp.
|
| Using Firefox for anything was literally painful.
| eganist wrote:
| > What do you mean by forced? What happens if you don't
| log in? What happens if you try to log in in firefox?
|
| Companies with application allow-lists simply don't allow
| non-Chrome browsers for use on their endpoints. That's
| the easiest way.
|
| Companies without allow-lists may still block Firefox in
| other ways, though none quite as effective as above.
| Still, the block is usually on the endpoint, occasionally
| the proxy.
| insanitybit wrote:
| One of two scenarios.
|
| 1. The Endpoint Verification extension is used to ensure
| that the browser/ system is compliant before connecting
| to certain services such as any SSO.
|
| 2. Internal tools were tested with Chrome and to ensure
| that users were using an up to date tool they were gated
| on the user agent.
|
| Chrome offers a host of endpoint management integrations
| that make it a far better choice for Enterprise than
| Mozilla. Mozilla could very easily build a management
| portal for Firefox or, even better, build an integration
| with various SSO providers.
|
| Whereas Chrome really only integrates with GSuite Firefox
| could support Okta, O365, GSuite, and more, making it the
| de-facto corporate browser.
|
| This isn't even complicated, this is one of many ideas I
| have that are easily within their ability, are taken
| straight from the Chrome playbook, leverages their
| singular asset, and their major competitive advantage
| (that they are "open").
|
| Mozilla's CEO has to be fired. The incompetence and
| mismanagement is obscene.
| XorNot wrote:
| I have never encountered this. Everything I've had to use
| for work works with Firefox just fine.
|
| Chrome gets put on corporate machines because the IT
| people use Chrome. None of these people seem to regard ad
| blocking as an internal security feature yet.
| Animats wrote:
| If your personal Google account is cancelled, do you
| become unemployable?
| Jarwain wrote:
| Wouldn't they have a corporate suite account used to log
| in?
| insanitybit wrote:
| Yes, that should be obvious. I can't imagine what the
| parent was thinking.
| hgsgm wrote:
| And if they catch you using it they might ban the company
| you work for by association.
| Havoc wrote:
| >1. Build a better browser. People browse a lot.
|
| Don't think there is anything with it (now). Chrome just
| captured all the mindshare by being a lot faster & leaner for
| a while
|
| Hard to fix a mindshare problem with a technical solution
| given that they're now about on par (roughly)
| kevingadd wrote:
| "Build integrations with services" is the silliest possible
| advice for Mozilla to be getting on Hacker News. Any time
| people talk about Mozilla on this website, you see comments
| about Pocket or VPN or any of the other integrations Mozilla
| did, and most of the comments (if not all) are negative.
| Persona is the closest thing I can think of and that was a
| failure, nobody wanted it.
|
| As a former member of both the Firefox and Chrome teams I
| think you're also deeply misunderstanding the difference in
| scope and scale of the teams and the products. The thing
| you're suggesting Mozilla should Just Do Somehow is not
| feasible.
| Animats wrote:
| > Build a better browser.
|
| The Linux version has definitely become worse over the last
| year. It keeps stalling for no good reason.
| likeabbas wrote:
| Mozilla may have one path, albeit a long shot. If Apple were
| to decide that it's cheaper to give money to Mozilla and have
| FF be the default iOS browser, that would be their best shot
| for success. Or maybe Apple could buy out Mozilla entirely.
| This scenario isn't likely but I don't think it's completely
| out of the question.
| JimDabell wrote:
| When Apple decided to build Safari, they hired one of the
| creators of Firefox and _still_ chose the relatively
| obscure KHTML as their base over the at-the-time major
| market share Gecko. If they didn't pick Gecko then, they
| certainly aren't going to throw everything on WebKit away
| to do it now. It's also a terrible move to buy a competitor
| when they are under legal scrutiny for having a controlling
| interest in web browsers.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Alternately if the EU or some other government were
| concerned about privacy (both in the "don't collect
| dossiers" and the "don't harass people with popups and
| unwanted features" meanings) and competition it could fully
| fund Mozilla or a fork of Mozilla that is free of Pocket
| and similar distractions.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| On the one hand, it would be nice for Mozilla to focus on
| firefox, but on the other hand, Mozilla screwing around has
| produced things like Rust, so maybe they have earned some
| credit to screw around if that's what the donors actually
| want.
| insanitybit wrote:
| I consider Rust and Servo to be exactly the kind of things
| that they should be working on in order to strengthen their
| core product.
| blihp wrote:
| Their 'donor' is Google, their users are us. Without us
| they have no donor. Rust at least makes some kind of sense
| because it is a tool they used to build parts of Firefox.
|
| Aside from being the new hotness, what exactly about AI
| makes sense for Mozilla/Firefox to jump into and have
| anything to offer? The one obvious thing they could do
| would be to integrate AI capabilities into the browser for
| the _users_ benefit (i.e. the most valuable thing they
| could do to contribute to 'trustworthy AI'. Note that this
| would not require a new foundation/company... just
| integrating the capability into the product they already
| have) But of course Mozilla most likely won't do this...
| they're going to keep taking moonshots they can't afford. I
| can't say I'll miss them when they're gone.
| noahlevenson wrote:
| > Without us they have no donor.
|
| Former Mozilla fellow here. I wish I could agree with
| this sentiment, but it's untrue. Mozilla is a corrupt
| nonprofit which exists solely to advance the interests of
| elites. The users don't matter. Within Mozilla there is
| disdain for the concerns of regular people.
| Entinel wrote:
| I agree with this for the most part but "just build a better
| browser" is naive. For starters, everyone has a different of
| what "better" is. I'm actually pretty happy with Firefox for
| the most part and I think being the company that sells safety
| is a good fit for Mozilla to move into.
| insanitybit wrote:
| > For starters, everyone has a different of what "better"
| is.
|
| We can all agree on some things though. I'm talking about
| core metrics. Performance, stability, safety. Beyond that
| there are some more "controversial" things like privacy,
| and then you have purely subjective things like UX.
|
| When I say "build a better browser" I mean that they should
| take those core capabilities and invest heavily in them.
| Instead, one of their most promising projects, Servo, was
| canned "because covid" while their CEO took their largest 8
| figure payment ever.
| quesera wrote:
| Mozilla's greatest failure with Firefox is one of
| marketing.
|
| It's a performant, stable, safe, and private browser.
|
| (It lags Chrome in some potted performance tests, but it
| is more than adequately performant. Firefox is much
| better than Chrome at memory management. It never
| crashes. It does not steal your data. It allows you the
| greatest degree of privacy in any major browser. Side
| tabs are possible.)
|
| But no one can compete with Google's marketing, or
| Apple's iOS advantage. Not even Microsoft. Certainly not
| Mozilla.
|
| Mozilla has failed us in so so many ways. You mention one
| egregious example.
|
| But we've failed Mozilla too. Anyone who recommends
| Chrome over Firefox is making a mistake detrimental to
| the well-being of the internet.
|
| Not that Chrome is a bad browser. It's great. Almost as
| good as Firefox! Chrome has terrible tab management and
| chews RAM, but it's performant and secure and lovely.
|
| But Chrome is a bad path forward for the internet, and
| this is important.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Firefox is bad at browsing the web, because complex
| websites don't test for Firefox compatible.
| mindcrime wrote:
| This doesn't match my experience. I use Firefox as my
| "daily driver" browser on my personal machine and the
| number of browser compatibility issues I run into over a
| given period of time approximates 0. It's vanishingly
| rare for me to encounter something that's Firefox
| specific.
| [deleted]
| m0llusk wrote:
| Mozilla Fluent internationalization
| (https://github.com/projectfluent) is superior to other
| offerings. Firefox is almost entirely transitioned to Fluent
| (https://www.arewefluentyet.com/). This puts Firefox in a
| position to potentially perform well in providing good quality
| browsing experiences to a global audience using many languages.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| I use Firefox more than any other application.
|
| I don't care about _anything_ else Mozilla has built in the
| past decade, unless you count Rust.
|
| As they continue devoting resources towards more and more
| things that aren't Firefox, they only hasten the day when I'll
| give up and move to Brave.
| thrown123098 wrote:
| Crazy idea: make a browser which adds features with new
| versions instead of how they are currently removing them.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I don't know of any features that would improve Firefox's
| market share to any significant effect. Tbh I haven't even
| noticed any feature removals, but that's just my day to day
| use cases: I bookmark things, I have multiple windows with
| tabs open, I install privacy add one and ad blockers, I
| sometimes open the console and mess around with websites. I
| don't think the vast majority of the market even does a
| portion of what I do, much less any more obscure features. So
| I'm not inclined to believe that any removals changes
| Firefox's market share to any significant effect. They just
| have no realistic way to monetize a browser. I doubt safari
| or chrome are money makers either, but they have
| anticompetitive conglomerates using those browsers as
| customer lock in and not a core product. Completely different
| needs there.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| No single removal changed Firefox's market share to any
| significant effect, but it's death of a thousand cuts.
| Eventually, they're going to have to start doing things
| again that gain them users rather than lose them.
|
| (Happy Waterfox user; my "one feature" was multirow tabs,
| and the general betrayal of the Quantum rewrite. "We will
| add these features back as extensions" my unsupported ass.
| Bring back UI modding. PS: Same goes for Firefox Android,
| which I've thankfully found an old APK for.)
| pr0zac wrote:
| You can still mod Firefox's UI pretty easily, its all
| defined by CSS files and not too difficult to customize.
| I for instance actually did the opposite of what you
| wanted and completely got rid of the tab bar cause I use
| Sidebery for tab management:
| https://i.imgur.com/cHz1clI.png Theres a whole subreddit
| for it even: https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/
|
| This repo (and that subreddit) has all the info on
| setting stuff up in Firefox:
| https://github.com/aris-t2/customcssforfx and even has a
| CSS example for doing multi-tab lines: https://github.com
| /Aris-t2/CustomCSSforFx/blob/master/curren...
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Sure, but every time I try this it has terrible UX
| compared to TMP, particularly around scrolling and
| dragging.
|
| (Also Firefox breaks it once a year or so.)
|
| Not sure how much this is lack of developer effort vs
| lack of support from Firefox.
| bacchusracine wrote:
| >Same goes for Firefox Android, which I've thankfully
| found an old APK for.
|
| Not sure how much this will help you, I don't know which
| features you're keeping the older version of Firefox
| Android around for. But have you looked into Iceraven
| browser?
|
| https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser
| makeitdouble wrote:
| In a way...I kinda wonder how much Mozilla needs to stay a
| purely private company.
|
| Giving the current climate relative to Google, Microsoft and
| Apple's presence on the web, having Mozilla become a nationally
| funded project at a dedicated org. doesn't look like wild
| dreams.
|
| To jest if it becomes Germany's official administration's
| technology provider, investing a significant amount in the
| ongoing maintenance of firefox would be a given. Make that a
| multi-country deal and enough money would float around.
|
| There would be still issues on the governance and keeping it a
| competitive and innovative product, but it isn't unheard of.
| max51 wrote:
| what would be the point of keeping them afloat if they no
| longer focus on firefox?
|
| The only reason why Mozilla exists in the first place in
| Firefox. If they can't make a good web browser, there is no
| reason for them to exist in the first place.
| aliljet wrote:
| It's probably way too late to get my two pennies into this
| discussion, but this is FANTASTIC news. Individual developers
| that want access to OPEN models for their building purposes
| shouldn't be beholden to a new corporate overlord. Here's hoping
| that Mozilla can rally the makers in the community with real
| dollars to spend toward models that all people can use.
| PheeThav1zae7fi wrote:
| [dead]
| asim wrote:
| Oh to have enough money to sink $30m into a landing page and an
| announcement. Heckling aside, I think it's good that the likes of
| Mozilla are investing in this space. We need diversification from
| the bigger players and Mozilla has a reputation of trying to
| create a sense of openness unlike the other Open labelled
| entities.
|
| Will be interesting to see what _actually_ comes out of this
| though.
| dusted wrote:
| Hopefully they divert some resources away from firefox so I don't
| have to lose all my tabs when it decides to force an update on me
| all the time.. or constantly change nonsense around in the UI..
| pr0zac wrote:
| Settings => General => Startup => Open previous windows and
| tabs
|
| That setting should solve the restart losing tabs/windows
| problem you're experiencing.
| nmcela wrote:
| Just as I was complaining about the worst monopolies taking the
| lead on AI - Mozilla comes to the rescue by announcing
| independent open-source AI ecosystem. This is great news!
| nmcela wrote:
| Addendum:
|
| I will be supporting this ecosystem in any way I can. If you
| want to be empowered rather than enslaved by AI, you should
| consider supporting it too. Every fighter counts!
| wallaBBB wrote:
| Not really, this is how they got in the current situation with
| justified existential fears.
|
| Branching out into popular fields and spending a shit load of
| resources (in relative terms to Mozilla size) although they're
| late to the party. Meanwhile neglecting the core product.
| gregman1 wrote:
| Well at least they did not jump on blockchain bandwagon which
| is a very good sign!
| blululu wrote:
| They tried accepting blockchain donations, but were given a
| lot of public ridicule for the idea:
| https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/6/22870787/mozilla-pauses-
| cr...
| creatonez wrote:
| They started accepting bitcoin donations in 2014, and
| then got lots of public ridicule for the idea in late
| 2021, and then stopped in 2022 due to environmental
| concerns.
|
| There were signs that cryptocurrencies were inherently
| troublesome from the very beginning, but regardless,
| accepting bitcoin donations in 2014-2019 isn't exactly
| the same as participating in the NFT craze of 2021.
| eimrine wrote:
| Mozilla has some stories about suffering from SJW. First
| was refusal Brendan Eich because of shitty reason, now
| refusal of bitcoins.
| Zuiii wrote:
| I make it a point to donate exclusively in bitcoin
| because I see digital cash as a fundamental human right
| and want to see more adoption[1]. If mozilla gives up on
| money because of a vocal minority, then it's their loss.
| A lot of other more reputable charities still accept it
| :D
|
| [1]: Willing to switch to more environmentally friendly
| alternatives as long as they have the same properties as
| blockchain cryptocurrencies. Until then, I'll continue
| donating in crypto.
| wussboy wrote:
| Don't give them ideas!
| janalsncm wrote:
| > Mozilla.ai's initial focus? Tools that make generative AI safer
| and more transparent. And, people-centric recommendation systems
| that don't misinform or undermine our well-being
|
| This all sounds well and good (and makes for a fine press
| release) but where the rubber meets the road will be how these
| things are defined.
|
| What does it really mean for AI to be "safe"? What is the bigger
| danger, being insulted by a computer or having entire industries
| gutted, putting millions out of a job? You can't pay rent but
| hey, at least the AI was nice about it.
|
| What does it mean to have "people-centric" recommendation
| systems? It's such an irritatingly corporate and meaningless
| term. Under one definition, collaborative filtering is already
| exactly that, but CF led to filter bubbles because it turns out a
| person's beliefs aren't normally distributed.
|
| What does it mean that a system doesn't misinform? You're going
| to need some arbiter of truth. Misleading journalism has been an
| issue since journalism was born, I don't think $30 million from
| Mozilla is going to change that, however high-minded their
| intentions.
|
| And that isn't even getting into technical issues with generative
| models. I think anyone who has played around with statistical
| language models like ChatGPT knows that they don't have a
| knowledge graph. They are not expert systems. The problem of
| squaring GOFAI with deep learning is a problem several orders of
| magnitude larger than Moz has pledged. I'll bet anything the
| smartest Google engineers wished they knew how to create an AI
| that doesn't misinform before their stock tanked 10%.
|
| But this will be a great resume pad for their VP of whatever to
| have led.
| tommica wrote:
| Good luck with the project!
| rllearneratwork wrote:
| yeah, time to give up on Firefox because Mozilla can't seem to
| focus.
| AlbertoGP wrote:
| GPT models have been shown to get significantly more truthful
| when trained on the right data set:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efPrtcLdcdM&t=7m42s
|
| The 30 million they are investing should be enough to reproduce
| that. Looking forward to it!
| rvz wrote:
| Yet another sign of desperation from an already distracted
| Mozilla.
|
| This is why Firefox is probably going to be less of a priority to
| be competitive against Chrome and its derivatives.
| causi wrote:
| Maybe if this really takes off, in a couple of decades they'll
| have enough money to dedicate a research team into finding a way
| for Firefox Mobile users to change their UserAgent. How does
| Mozilla seem to have the time and money to do literally anything
| _except_ give their users what they want?
| wussboy wrote:
| I'm still waiting for the opportunity to pay them for a
| freemium version of Firefox. I don't want Pocket. I don't want
| a VPN. I just want to pay for Firefox.
| hurflmurfl wrote:
| Can't you just set up a monthly (or one-time) donation?
| Although, it would be nice if it were possible to specify
| that you'd prefer money being spent on the browser, not on
| developing another Pocket or something.
| debugnik wrote:
| Donations go to Mozilla the non-profit, not to Mozilla
| Corporation which is the one maintaining Firefox. There's
| no way to give money for Firefox development other than
| spending on the Corp's side-services.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Too right.
|
| Mozilla Co gets their nose in some stuff I either
| disagree with or don't care about. I'd be happy to pay
| the Firefox team though.
| Brometheus wrote:
| Insane, that that's not possible
| causi wrote:
| I'd gladly do the same if I could get all my extensions. It's
| so annoying to have to pull my laptop out when I need to
| capture an embedded video from a page or want to download all
| the pictures or capture a screenshot of the whole web page
| Zuiii wrote:
| > want to download all the pictures or capture a screenshot
| of the whole web page
|
| This so much. A few sites I use don't offer a way to
| download invoices, so I rely on screenshots to save a
| copy.. except for firefox on android (I either take
| multiple screenshots using android's native screenshot
| functionality or avoid using firefox completely)
| phailhaus wrote:
| > people-centric recommendation systems that don't misinform or
| undermine our well-being
|
| X to Doubt. Recommendation systems are already people-centric,
| but it turns out that people will gladly misinform themselves if
| it Sounds Right. The solution is something companies are not
| willing to admit: we must deprioritize "recommendation systems".
| You have to let humans rank, tag, and organize content
| themselves. You can still have recommendations on the side for
| exploration, but it can't be the whole thing. It's boring, but
| it's the only long-term solution that doesn't eat itself.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Bye Firefox, we will miss you.
| ly3xqhl8g9 wrote:
| "This new company [mozilla.ai] will be led by Managing Director
| Moez Draief." And they link Mr. Draief's name to LinkedIn which
| hits you in the face with a login wall as hard as narrow AI will
| hit the jobs market. The way LinkedIn puts a login wall for
| reading public information and then hijacks the back button
| should warrant corporate death penalty.
|
| Better links for Mr. Draief [1] [2].
|
| [1] https://www.lse.ac.uk/statistics/people/moez-draief
|
| [2]
| https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=7zG0FQsAAAAJ&hl=...
| laserbeam wrote:
| I know that mozilla has a decent track record of sticking to
| their ethical principles. Despite that, OpenAI started in the
| same spot. Let's make ethical AI (and you can define ethics in
| multiple ways... Based on trust, privacy, open source-ness...
| Whatever). And even they turned 180.
|
| Will this be any different in the middle of an AI arms race
| because money can be made? I dunno... Doubts are strong.
| this_user wrote:
| Great, another way for Mozilla to burn money on some also-ran
| project where they have no expertise. Meanwhile, FF Mobile is
| still largely broken, and the desktop versions seems to be
| getting slower with each version.
| waboremo wrote:
| This gets repeated so much without anyone ever backing it up,
| it might as well have been a bot post.
| Xunjin wrote:
| I want to avoid being the "jerk one", but do you have any
| bench/topics which support your claim? I won't deny that FF
| Mobile is way slower than chrome when it needs to deal with
| tons of ads that uBlock Origin solves greatly.
| beeboop wrote:
| Unlikely, parent commenter has a history of stating facts
| without any substance
| Melatonic wrote:
| I have found the total opposite - Chrome Mobile slows to a
| hault with tons of tabs open
| tirpen wrote:
| I use Firefox mobile every day and have had no problems with it
| at all, what makes you call it "largely broken"?
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Daily Firefox mobile user. It is buggy as hell. Back behavior
| is weird in several edge cases (open app, swipe to another
| app, swipe back, select tab, go back - boom, app closes).
|
| On top of that there is a regression where it loses scroll
| location on tabs in the background sometimes. Not sure the
| root cause here and it happens inconsistently for me.
|
| Slowness has gotten worse. I think this is tied to something
| with rendering because it happens on static sites. I start
| getting the first paint but the text just takes forever to
| load in.
|
| We are several years in and they support.. 14? extensions
| now. If you are not quickly onboarding extensions then let me
| freely load what I want without fighting collections. Either
| commit or do not.
|
| The only feature that has been added is a new splash screen
| on browser updates on desktop. Thanks I guess? I really just
| want to read my webpages, not pick an accent color.
|
| I am starting to use Brave on desktop a bit more every day. I
| worry about their previous dabbling in crypto but Firefox is
| becoming too subpar.
| aembleton wrote:
| > Back behavior is weird in several edge cases (open app,
| swipe to another app, swipe back, select tab, go back -
| boom, app closes).
|
| Just tried on 111.0 and I can't recreate that. Not seen it
| either.
|
| My main gripe with Firefox Mobile is not being able to drag
| down to reload the page. That just feels how it should be
| and I keep forgetting it doesn't work on Firefox.
| jonas-w wrote:
| You can enable it in the nightly version but i wouldn't
| recommend it. It doesn't work that good.
| datkam wrote:
| They block most extensions by default.
| thiht wrote:
| Do you need anything more than uBlock Origin on mobile,
| really?
| datkam wrote:
| I don't know why a pocket computer should be less
| capable... Because it is smaller?
| kome wrote:
| so what. the other mobile browsers don't even have
| extensions... just thanks to firefox you can have a sane
| web experience on an android. because it supports ublock
| origin.
| datkam wrote:
| So what?
|
| They intentionaly block them... Thats what.
| kome wrote:
| because if they let random extensions go wild they would
| break so many rules of google and apple stores; they are
| the problem. not mozilla.
| datkam wrote:
| Thats not the excuse they were giving...
| Melatonic wrote:
| No idea what you are talking about - I find Firefox desktop
| working better than ever and never run into issues with Firefox
| mobile on Android. I even run the dev nightly version on both
| so I can have a completely separate browser (and separate
| profiles) for testing.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| This could use some explanation:
|
| > "Mozilla.ai's initial focus? Tools that make generative AI
| safer and more transparent. And, people-centric recommendation
| systems that don't misinform or undermine our well-being."
|
| 1) What kind of tool is that? More 'transparent' - are we talking
| about a map of the training corpus, snapshots of the AI's
| internal state, or what? And what does 'safer' mean - a filter on
| the output of some kind? Will that be a transparent filter? Will
| there be a secretive committee that decides what's safe and
| what's not? Will it take recommendations from the Department of
| Homeland Security on that question, as Twitter was doing?
|
| 2) What is a people-centric recommendation system, exactly? Does
| that mean people get control of the knobs and dials on the
| recommendation system? For example, I'd like an 'inverted'
| option, the ability to grab a random selection of the content
| that the system thinks I wouldn't care about. I'd like the option
| to make different lists of channels and randomly grab content
| just from those lists. Also, a list of channels I never want to
| see any content from, period. I suspect, however, that the result
| will be more in the flavor of "Big Brother knows what's good for
| you, and what's not".
|
| As far as whether I'd be 'misinformed' or 'well-being
| destabilized' by AI output, please stop being so paternalistic.
| If you're afraid people can't distinguish between fact and
| fiction, invest in better public education and teach skepticism
| and critical analysis skills to young people, instead of training
| them to be obedient little zombies who have absolute faith in
| institutional authorities.
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