What's the deal with Mozilla nowadays?
We've all seen the modern Mozilla's stance, and probably a great deal of different stances on it. But the majority of what I've seen hasn't really been positive, and it is strange how little the outrage I've seen has had any impact.
So why?
Mozilla's AI stance is a message of "this technology will be the future, and it is our job to shape the future healthily and safely". And I have a multitude of thoughts about this, but the most strange one to me is this concept of responsibility.
This isn't the first time Mozilla has tried to hop on a trend. In 2022, Mozilla bought out a metaverse company. Similarly, Mozilla has released VR browsers for the meta quest, to keep up with modern tech.
Where are these decisions coming from?
Though the stated answer is that the Mozilla foundation is run by cooperating teams and a leadership council, it'd be hard to convince me that some folks don't carry more authority than others.
Mozilla's president, Mark Surman, is a name that keeps coming up again and again when researching this shift towards AI. This could just be because he is the one writing about these decisions, but given the multitude of blog posts and interviews he has done about Mozilla's AI stance, and his position as president of the company, I think it's fair to assume he might have played a larger role in this.
further outline
- mozilla has jumped on modern trends (mozilla browser for VR, etc)
- who pushed mozilla to this? (suspicionv mark surman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Surman)
- can mozilla actually have the effect they want? id say no
- more, unsure yet :)