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Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

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Re: Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

#81

Post by storus »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #53
mittensc wrote: post #10

> Mozilla is focused on deploying its roughly $1.4 billion worth of reserves to support “mission driven” organizations, according to a new report. > The nonprofit, also the parent of Firefox, is investing in artificial intelligence startups that are working on safety and governance issues in AI. Why?, they want to go bankrupt?, do they like burning money? I would understand investing in AI Tech... Brilliant if they u…

> that's governments job Why do people take these AI "safety" research projects at face value? The real reason you need AI that is "safe" and "governable" is so that when you start having it promote advertisers content or support the current administration, you don't have to worry about it going "off the rails" and promoting a competing product to criticizing the administration. I'm sure plenty of researchers in this…

We currently can't do "AI safety" even in bleeding edge alignment research so investing into some startups in that area is just burning money. Current LLMs/ViTs have non-zero probability of producing something unsafe and it's their inherent trait.

Re: Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

#82

Post by pseudalopex »

wolvoleo wrote: post #26
mikkupikku wrote: post #11

Wowz just like Star Wars! Heckin updoots xD Sorry, I can't take Mozilla seriously when they're doing anything other than Firefox or Thunderbird. Enough of this crap. Dressing it up with juvenile capeshit references doesn't help.

Yes please let them focus on making Firefox economically sustainable without Google. Then worry about all the fluffy dogood stuff

Investing in AI startups is their strategy to become sustainable without Google seemingly.

Re: Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

#85

Post by mrandish »

poszlem wrote: post #50
dralley wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The charitable entity known as the Mozilla Foundation and the development entity known as the Mozilla Corporation are not the same. Nothing wrong with the foundation doing these things with their spare cash, it literally does not impact Firefox at all.

That’s one interpretation. Another is that people typically support foundations not simply because they “do good,” but because they advance a specific cause the donor personally values. For example, if I donated to a foundation focused on developing cancer treatments, and that same foundation later shifted its efforts to addressing melting ice caps, I would likely feel frustrated, since that was not the purpose for w…

> people typically support foundations

While I agree with the general point that non-profit donors have a legitimate interest in the use of funds, in the particular case of the Mozilla Foundation, I believe the vast majority of that money is from placement fees Google paid to be the default search engine in Firefox. As the pay-for-placement market has evolved and Firefox's browser share has fallen, this income has also fallen dramatically.

On the general point about non-profit donations, legally non-profit's use of funds are governed by their board of directors and charter, which often are not constrained in ways donors may assume, hence the need for due diligence prior to giving.

Re: Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

#87

Post by sparcpile »

epiccoleman wrote: post #67
sparcpile wrote: post #4

The sooner the AI bubble pops and takes all of these companies out, the better the world will be.

Which companies do you expect to be taken out? Google and Microsoft will obviously remain. I have a hard time envisioning that OpenAI or Anthropic will go under - especially Anthropic, who are reportedly raking in billions from Claude subscriptions. Just from my armchair predictions, it's not really any of the juggernauts who have to worry, but rather the many companies springing up to try SaaS offerings with LLMs at…

OpenAI and Anthropic are bleeding money and both need hundreds of billions of dollars in the next couple of years to break even. Oracle is highly overleveraged and I am hoping that the bubble takes them out. You can find the gory details at Ed Zitron's blog. https://www.wheresyoured.at/premium-how-the-ai-bubble-bursts...

Re: Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

#88

Post by mrandish »

j-bos wrote: post #55
dralley wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that there is no way to make Firefox economically sustainable without Google (or some other search provider, but google won that war comprehensively). Browsers are fully commoditized and subsidized. Funding the browser with a combination of outside revenue sources and search deals is the way everyone does it.

> Mozilla is focused on deploying its roughly $1.4 billion worth of reserves to support “mission driven” organizations, according to a new report. Back of the envelope math says that's worth 50-70 million dollars a year, taking into account inflation. A cracked developer is worth 1/2 a million per year, both of Mozilla's core offerings are OSS so benefit from free code contributions. Is that not enough for a dozen hi…

> Back of the envelope math says...

It sounds like you haven't looked into Mozilla Foundation's history regarding CEO salary, bonuses and overall use of funds.

Re: Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

#89

Post by js8 »

madeofpalk wrote: post #58
crystal_revenge wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that's governments job Why do people take these AI "safety" research projects at face value? The real reason you need AI that is "safe" and "governable" is so that when you start having it promote advertisers content or support the current administration, you don't have to worry about it going "off the rails" and promoting a competing product to criticizing the administration. I'm sure plenty of researchers in this…

Uh, I mean, I think we've seen first hand that generally one aspect of safety we want is to not produce sexualised images of children.

Is it even an attainable goal? It seems an NN with less than say 4 billion parameters will be able to do that. The cost of training will likely go down with more models being available. Unless we lock down the computing for majority of people, I don't see how we can prevent someone creating a CSAM model in their garage.

I don't want to see CSAM created, but the totalitarian control required is too much for my taste (and frankly it's preferable for that person to use NN than to go out and hurt actual children).

Not to mention even locked down technology is often being abused by the privileged.

Re: Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

#90

Post by bluescrn »

epiccoleman wrote: post #67
sparcpile wrote: post #4

The sooner the AI bubble pops and takes all of these companies out, the better the world will be.

Which companies do you expect to be taken out? Google and Microsoft will obviously remain. I have a hard time envisioning that OpenAI or Anthropic will go under - especially Anthropic, who are reportedly raking in billions from Claude subscriptions. Just from my armchair predictions, it's not really any of the juggernauts who have to worry, but rather the many companies springing up to try SaaS offerings with LLMs at…

> Google and Microsoft will obviously remain

Microsoft seem to be pushing all kinds of users away in all directions at the moment while focused on the AI bubble*. Once it bursts/deflats, will they come back?

Or are we looking at a post-Windows future, where MS just focuses on cloud stuff?

(Or will there be a 'we learned from our mistakes, honest' Windows 12 that wins people back in the same way that Win10 did after Win8?)

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