I got a copy of the text from the email, and added it below, with personal information and link trackers removed.
Hello [receiver’s name],
I’ve long dreamed about working for Mozilla. I learned how to send encrypted e-mail using Mozilla Thunderbird, and I’ve been a Firefox user since almost as long as I can remember. In more recent years, I’ve been an avid follower of Mozilla’s advocacy work, and was lucky enough to partner with Mozilla on investigative journalism in my last job.
In many ways, Mozilla was the dream – and now, as the leader of the Foundation, my job is to make my dreams for Mozilla come true. What that means, though, is making your dreams come true – for a trustworthy and open future of technology; for tech that is a tool for liberation, not limitation; and for tech that values people over profit.
So I’m reaching out to technologists, activists, researchers, engineers, policy experts, and, most importantly, to you – the people who make up the Mozilla community – to ask a simple question.
[receiver’s name]. What is your dream for Mozilla? I invite you to take a moment to share your thoughts by completing this brief survey.
Let’s start with this question:
Question 1: What is most important to you right now about technology and the internet?
- Protecting my privacy online
- Avoiding scams
- Choosing products, apps, technology, and services that I can trust
- Keeping children safe online
- Responsible use of AI
- Keeping the internet is open and free
- Knowing how to spot misinformation
- Other (please specify)
With your help, together we can imagine and create the Internet we want. Thank you for being a part of this.
Always yours,
Nabiha Syed Executive Director Mozilla Foundation
And what, exactly, is positive about it, that has no associated negative outcomes?
Gee I dunno. Maybe that you get to translate web pages without sending that data to Google?
Gee I dunno. Maybe blind people being able to browse the web better?
Gee I dunno. Maybe to stop people being scammed?
E: I’m assuming you downvoted because you hate privacy, blind people, not being able to scam people with fake reviews, or some combination of the above lol.
Interpreting MRI scans?
Translating language?
Object detection on assembly lines?
Object detection to sort recycling?
Identifying disease markers?
Classifying data?
…etc
Things that it’s been used for for ages now, and has become ubiquitous for.
I for one do know that and am not against AI religiously and have used it to great effect and STILL DON’T WANT TO DOWNLOAD IT WITH MY BROWSER. Just make it an addon.
Specific to generative AI, I think client side generation can be a good thing, such as sentiment analysis or better word suggestions/autocomplete.
A number of other helpful tasks have negative outcomes, but if someone is going to use it, then I prefer they use the version of the tech that minimizes those negative outcomes. Whether Mozilla should be focussing on building that is a different matter though
AI that isn’t generative AI has a lot of positive uses, but usually that’s not what these discussions are about