Mastodawn

All AI features will also be opt-in. I think there are some grey areas in what 'opt-in' means to different people (e.g. is a new toolbar button opt-in?), but the kill switch will absolutely remove all that stuff, and never show it in future. That's unambiguous.

…

I'm not asking for faith in our direction - the thing I love about the Firefox community is how open, honest, and technical it is.

But I do ask that you don't have the opposite of faith. Like, try not to be determined that we're going to do the wrong thing here.

…

I hope we can (re)gain your trust here.

I don't personally work on this stuff, but I'll try hard to answer any questions you have.

And other than that, I'll get back in my lane, and stick to web platform stuff.

- Jake (@jaffathecake)

Just be glad this thread wasn't a long-ass video. It almost was.

@firefoxwebdevs Yeah I think most people mainly deplore the hype and the resources spent on technological trends whose benefits are not always obvious. Before that, Mozilla advertised about FirefoxOS, before killing it to focus on IoT, before moving on to blockchain, then crypto, then NFT's and now IA. In more that 10 years, none of this projects produced anything useful for the users.

@firefoxwebdevs Right now, Mozilla would probably be the first company to be diagnosed with ADHD. It really can't seem to focus and do something productive. The question was never "should Firefox have IA?". The question is "to do what?". Mozilla is communicating that IA is coming. Not announcing a new feature. TBH, it's worrying. IA should be an implementation detail, not the central point.

@firefoxwebdevs It's like Mozilla is a car company and it's advertising a new car with leather in it. Ok, cool but what is it? A berline, a pickup, a SUV? Will I recharge with electricity or fuel? And Mozilla's answer is: "it has leather in it!"

It's… not great.

@christophehenry @firefoxwebdevs look, you have a point about communication. It's hard and Mozilla isn't top notch at it, to be polite. But also, Mozilla never worked on IOT, nor blockchain nor crypto stuff. There were vague talks of transitioning some of the Firefox OS resources into IOT exploration for a very brief time, which didn't end up happening so I'll give you that one. But where the hell hell is the rest coming from?

@christophehenry @firefoxwebdevs no NFT either. Obviously.

@nical I can't find the sources although I remember clearly something about it but they definitively developped a Metaverse thing and IoT. This doesn't really change my argument.

https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/06/mozilla-foundation-crypto/

catch Dec 18

@christophehenry @nical they very publicly had to walk back accepting crypto donations in 2022. It's not quite putting crypto miner in Firefox or linking it to a crypto exchange but still.

Firefox maker Mozilla pauses crypto donations amid backlash

The Mozilla Foundation, which oversees Firefox development, is pausing the ability to accept donations in cryptocurrencies following a backlash.

TechCrunch

matthias koplenig Dec 18

@catch56 @christophehenry @nical Not quite a crypto miner? Do you even hear yourself?
The payment provider also allowed crypto-transfers, how is that even a scandal?

Somehow the Internet Archive takes in crypto donations to this day, and nobody cares.

catch Dec 18

@metasieben @christophehenry @nical because the Mozilla foundation kept going on about how they accept crypto currencies on their social media. If you don't know why it was a scandal maybe you could have done some research for 5 minutes instead of looking silly.

Gabriel Pires Dec 18

@catch56 @metasieben @christophehenry @nical And? What's wrong with cryptocurrency donations? How are social posts asking for USD donations different than posts asking for crypto?

catch Dec 18

@gsprs @metasieben @christophehenry @nical imagine having so little personality or interests that you have to put 'investor' in your masto profile, and can't think of anything to do with your spare time except to reply to people to 'defend' your pet technology with the most inane comments possible. Not a single post on main.

Felix Dec 18

@catch56 That's... not very kind or thoughtful, and barely relevant to the topic.

just adrienne Jan 8

@felurx @catch56 It's extremely accurate, though!

Gabriel Pires Dec 18

@catch56 @metasieben @christophehenry @nical I have 156 posts and the vast majority are not about crypto, what are you even on about? Your most recent posts are pretty much all about AI, projecting much? 😆

soc Dec 19

@catch56 @gsprs @metasieben @christophehenry @nical 😂

MuhammadFree🇵🇸Jan 26

@catch56 @gsprs @metasieben @christophehenry @nical
Imagine having so litte personality you need to justify, well, defend, your claims like a child

RAK Dec 22

@gsprs @catch56 @metasieben @christophehenry @nical: Cryptocurrency is and has been a technological manifestation of Austrian School "economics". Its entire form reflects that.

Gabriel Pires Dec 22

@raktheundead @catch56 @metasieben @christophehenry @nical In other words it’s bad because it’s existence and success doesn’t fit in your ideology. You know you’re pushing some evil crap when you see personal privacy and security as enemies in your worldview.
(Yet another one of those people who reply and then immediately block you to prevent you from replying back, cult behavior)

mathew Dec 19

@metasieben @catch56 @christophehenry @nical I don’t donate to the Internet Archive precisely because they take crypto donations.

RedwoodSec Dec 19

@catch56 @christophehenry @nical You know what’s funny about that news link is the featured image is the Firefox memorial that recognized the Mozilla community, and where’s that been for years? In some storage facility, it really speaks to how important community is to Mozilla leadership these days.

@christophehenry just to be clear, I've been working there for over a decade. I would know. Mozilla did not invest engineering resources into NFT, or crypto, not even IOT for all intents and purposes, although almost. You have a problem with VR? I don't blame you I don't think it's particularly interesting, but if a company decides to have a small team experiment with VR in case it becomes important, then maybe give them a break? The other 1000 employees are still working the usual stuff.

@christophehenry how many people will read your toot and think "oh, Mozilla was into NFT, that sucks, I guess I won't fact check, it's been written by someone on the internet, that must be true"? Mozilla is such an easy target with its frequent PR mess ups, could we focus on stuff that is actually real?

@nical I think you're missing my point entirely but it's ok. We don't have to agree.

abben Dec 18

@christophehenry @nical I mean you just falsley listed like a half a dozen things and didn't acknowledge or correct. Why is that?

@abbenm Well then maybe I'm wrong. It's ok. It happens.
@nical

Julien W.Dec 18

@nical
We did a little bit of IOT during a year, but this was a smallish amount of engineers (including me).

And we also did Hubs more recently (is that a metaverse? I don't know).

But well, that's details and wasn't part of Firefox.

@christophehenry

Ian Bicking Dec 19

@christophehenry They did work on both of those in Emerging Technologies (which was disbanded and most folks laid off in 2020).

I think IoT was seldom more than two people, usually one, and maybe some supporting folks around the web standards.

Hubs (a VR meeting space) was a bit larger, and had some external funding. Apparently it's spun off: https://hubsfoundation.org/ (it's always hard to know how successful these things are though)

In cases like these Mozilla usually hoped something would eventually spin off. These were never going to be a new direction for Mozilla or Firefox.

Hubs Foundation

We'll take it from here.

Hubs Foundation

Creak Dec 20

@nical @christophehenry @firefoxwebdevs I think this blog post sums up the increasing number of issues Firefox users have with Mozilla's decisions over the past years: https://kevquirk.com/blog/is-firefox-firefucked/

I'm still using FF, for now, but I must say that before it was by choice, and now it's because the alternatives are alas no better.

Is Firefox Firefucked? | Kev Quirk

I've been using Firefox for over 20 years at this point, but after a stream of cock-ups, I'm thinking about moving on.

Kev Quirk

Andrew Wigglesworth Dec 18

@nical

There have been some hysterical responses to the Mozilla AI announcements, with a number of people instantly swearing off Firefox forever.

Frankly, I'll leave it and see what actually happens. Firefox is too important for the things I do.

They can play around with so-called "AI" a bit, so long as it's truly private, free software and I can completely remove it if I wish (which I probably do).

@ecadre agreed. Let's put the pitchfork away until something bad actually happens. Right now most of the the AI in Firefox is things like tiny models that do local translation (rather than send the whole text to Google who would use their own neural networks to do it), automatic captioning of images that lack alt text, text-to-speech, speech-to-text, and other small neural nets that take less energy to train than a run of our test suite. Not all machine learning is chat-freakin-gpt.

liquidlamp Dec 18

@nical @ecadre Why isnt there already a kills switch or opt in for these "tiny models?"

Having a dozen about:config settings be the only effective configuration option to disable Mozilla's current forays into AI doesnt exactly inspire trust about its future plans when the new CEOs first post is all about Firefox's AI future.

We've seen the direction the browser is already moving in with AI and user consent, so it should be no surprise that people are even more skeptical now.

@liquidlamp @ecadre that's not my area so all I can offer is the following perspective: would you like a kill witch for all features that begin with the letter "t" or that are implemented with functional programming? That's about the same level of rationality. These huge LLMs that gobble up energy like there is no tomorrow are not making the world a better place (and don't get me started on training on the work of artists without their consent) but a neural isn't necessarily power hungry
...

@liquidlamp @ecadre ... a neural net doesn't necessarily require scrapping the entire internet, it doesn't have to pretend to replace jobs. It's just an approach to implementing a wide range of different things. Perhaps what you want is a kill switch to disable features that lead to energy hungry uses of LLM (that would disable the search field) or a kill switch for disabling neural networks trained on dubious data sources (without the consent of authors), but firefox doesn't have those

@liquidlamp @ecadre if you don't want to use anything that has a neural net, then make sure to not take pictures with your phone, search something online or call anyone (on your phone, on zoom or other). So much basic signal processing uses neural networks these days without requiring nuclear power plants or using people's data. Mozilla's biggest mistake in my opinion is calling these things "AI".

liquidlamp Dec 18

@nical @ecadre so just dodges and snarky comments about "what even, like, is AI bro?"

This and farcical games about how "AI is actually opt in because you have to click the button we auto enabled and prominently added to the UI and can totally opt out of with obscure menu settings" makes it pretty clear Mozilla is just redefining common terms to avoid admitting it doesn't stand by its old core principlies of privacy and user consent.

abben Dec 18

@liquidlamp @nical @ecadre except for the part where they extensively responded to false claims about their use of like a half dozen technologies? Information literacy seems to have truly collapsed.

ww 🩶Dec 18

@liquidlamp @nical @ecadre that's a valid question though? at the end of the day, you're probably running firefox on a new-ish cpu with a neural net-based branch predictor. do you want an opt-out of that? it doesn't make any sense, unless your opposition to ai isn't based on any specific moral or practical issues with it.

Andrew Wigglesworth Dec 18

@nical

Yes, a good distinction. I am referring to the so-called "generative AI", Large Language Models (LLMs) etc. The chat bots, not the local software tricks that, for instance, help with exposure on your phone camera.

⊥ᵒᵚ Cᵸᵎᶺᵋᶫ∸ᵒᵘ ☑️Dec 18

@nical @liquidlamp @ecadre well, things like "suggest tab group name" shouldn't go anywhere near LLM anyway!

Damien de Lemeny Dec 18

@nical @liquidlamp @ecadre huge LLMs that gobble up energy like there's no tomorrow are front and center in all the AI hype response deployed by Mozilla, from the gpt4 alt-text to the sidebar chatbot integration to the shake to summarize feature to whatever is "AI Window" supposed to mean.
But yeah "what about perceptrons and Bayesian filters" you say ? Get outta here...

@ddelemeny @liquidlamp @ecadre that alt text generation model is 20MB and runs locally on a CPU. It is a great example of a thing that has the "AI" stamp but isn't an ecological and intellectual property disaster. Features like this one are so important for accessibility. If you want to blanket disable it along with unrelated things that happen to use a neural net under the hood, you do you, flip a few prefs. It's irational but you are in control.

@ddelemeny @liquidlamp @ecadre don't like the chat bot thing in the side bar? Me neither, don't use it. Don't like Google, me neither switch to another search engine. These things do have engagement so just let other users have what they want and configure your browser how you like it. I am pretty sure I won't like the AI window thing whatever that will be, I won't have to use it and the folks who do want to use it will be able to

yoasif Dec 18

@nical @ddelemeny @liquidlamp @ecadre Some of us don't like that Mozilla thinks its job is to make money (double bottom line) as the commons is robbed by the AI companies.

Where is Mozilla's moral clarity?

Nick Dec 19

@nical @ddelemeny @liquidlamp @ecadre I hope you realise the logical conclusion to this is, don't like Firefox? don't use it.

And that's exactly what I'll be doing if Firefox continues down this path.

soc Dec 19

@nhinck @nical @ddelemeny @liquidlamp @ecadre It's really amazing that Mozilla employees cannot help themselves to not act like complete dumbfucks in the comments for a single minute.

Nicolas Silva Dec 19

@nhinck @ddelemeny @liquidlamp @ecadre the message I am trying to to convey is that Firefox caters to many users. There are functionalities that are important to you and functionalities that are important to others. You have control over your own installation and are welcome to customize or disable features. You sound like you are demanding that your own preference be the only available option.

Damien de Lemeny Dec 19

@nical @nhinck @liquidlamp @ecadre then you're not listening. I repeat, you have an extension platform. You are usually very much able to let the user customize their experience by installing the set of optional extra features they want as add-ons. In fact installing add-ons is for many the only way to have a decent browsing experience. So maybe don't ship the BS featureset as part of the default when you're fucking unable to have decent ad-blocking, script control and proxy config.

Damien de Lemeny Dec 19

@nical @nhinck @liquidlamp @ecadre eat your own dogfood. Don't promote features that taint the social contract of a browser when you're unable to have actual empowering features as part of the baseline.

Nicolas Silva Dec 19

@ddelemeny @nhinck @liquidlamp @ecadre you are making a very bold claim about features being bullshit. The reality is that a lot of user research is done before putting time and effort into these things. There is hard data to back that a lot of people want even the most controversial features like chatbot in the side panel. That was a surprise to me, but that's how it is. It shouldn't have been a surprise in retrospect, looking at how popular chatgpt and whatnot have become.

Nick Dec 19

@nical @ddelemeny @liquidlamp @ecadre Firefox is certainly free to do whatever it wants.

If Firefox wants to partner with corporations that steal wholesale, please go ahead.

I don't understand why you are acting so incredulous over the fact that these decisions have consequences.

draeath Dec 18

@nical @liquidlamp @ecadre somewhere that boolean is being checked to enable a code path.

It shouldn't be that hard tweak that so two bools are checked, the "master" AI enable and the feature-specific one.

I know enough rust so if it really isn't that simple, pointing me to where that's actually implemented so I can eat my crow would be welcomed.

This feels more like a "we didn't think it would be so controversial so we didn't bother yet." (I'd say "read the room next time first")

Kilgore Trout Dec 21

@[email protected]

training on the work of artists without their consent

No artist would consent, if given the option.
@liquidlamp @ecadre

ilinamorato Dec 18

@liquidlamp Those tiny models were present long before the current AI hype cycle. They're the same things that on-device translation has been using for a decade or more; the current iteration started development in 2019, based on a model from 2017 (five years before ChatGPT). IMO we don't need a kill switch for it for the same reason we don't need a kill switch for the bookmarks toolbar; if you don't want that, you just turn it off or ignore it.

deutrino Dec 18

@nical @ecadre I'll be switching away from Firefox because I was already on the fence given my perception of poor management for at least a couple years now, and if I'm going to contribute any sort of energy to a project, even if it's only bug reports and recommendations to friends, I won't be contributing it to one where the designated leader reifies a pivot to generative AI as the most important development project, and drops hints that banning adblockers was on the table. no thanks. I'm out.

Val Packett 🧉Dec 18

@nical @ecadre #Firefox Translate is great.

Image captioning is great, as long as it's as clear it could be wrong as with translate.

Automatic tab groups are in theory fine and okay for ppl who want that, but there's been a lot of reports of big CPU usage% from it (odd tbh).

Link preview summaries are very much "nobody asked for this, stop dumbing everything down to summary slop, reading is good actually" >_<

Sidebar button for the big cloud chatbots is the one that feels the most offensive. Yes, it's not invasive and it would be great for Firefox to diversify its funding, but these big "AI" companies are so bad that one would hope an explicitly principled and "on our side" foundation could take a stand against them rather than effectively building promotions for them…