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Mozilla lays off 60 people, wants to build AI into Firefox
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2024
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Don't build AI into Firefox unless there is a tangible benefit.
Firefox exists as a no-bullshit alternative to prevent other browsers from having a monopoly. It also exists to promote open standards on the web.
It's sad to hear 60 people lost their jobs, especially when the Mozilla Foundation needs all the support we can give them. They're doing worlds of good by keeping standards open.
Highlighting fake reviews could be a tangible benefit, if it has a near-100% success rate. If it has significant false-positives or -negatives, it would probably be a net detriment.
For my money I subscribe to Mozilla services where I can, to support them. I value Firefox highly, as one of the few browsers left that's not just Chrome under the hood.
My main concern at the moment is Mozilla's money issues. I think AI services could likely make that worse.
However, if they can work with local large language models to run client side, could be an amazing feature.
Everyone's getting really excited about the newest largest model seeing how many parameters they can cram into the training, while I feel like this is the real use case: small, highly specialised models that can run locally.
Though Firefox was the whipping-boy for RAM-hogging back in the day, and including a local model might just catapult them back to the top of that particular chart ๐