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Mozilla lays off 60 people, wants to build AI into Firefox
(arstechnica.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
So frustrated to see how this conversation is playing out. This is exactly what people have been asking for but all anybody can seem to see is "AI" in the headline.
This pivot is about refocusing on:
This seems like a much better position for Mozilla to operate from, particularly because they've excelled at producing ethical SOTA ML for YEARS before ChatGPT. In all, this seems far more forward looking than the previous strategy of "make weird little web tools to make money maybe" and it's an absolutely massive untapped niche, that they already have the talent to tap into. If we punish the players best positioned to shift the industry standard away from extreme and exploitative data collection, we will end up in exactly the Orwellian AI hellscape that we're all so afraid of.
It is a better position and FF is going to be even better because of it. We need more options than just chromium. Open web standards dont stay open when everyone congregates.
No one asked for AI
No one asked for the shitty LLMs masquerading as AI. However, an AI that can do specialized things to help people out in day to day tasks would be great.
In this context or generally?
In the context of Firefox