Discussion
Can someone please explain what was so unbearably "inefficient" that we had to ruin every single interaction with a computer with the worst possible solution to any problem?
For real, what problem has been solved? I keep hearing about the "need" for AI like we were some hapless kitchen idiot in a 1980s infomercial that needed a vegetable curler or whatever.
@mttaggart "no more thinking misery with our new solutioniser! Go straight to action without time-consuming consideration"
@mttaggart The problems that have been solved are the ones that led to job cuts, more investments and more money. I'll applaud when AI cures cancer.
@AAKL Except those problems haven't been solved; they've only been transformed into later costs. Companies that went all-in have already begun rehiring because they've discovered that the models can't do the job.
@mttaggart
For me the ridiculous thing about is like.. the fact that computers work with a set of predefined, documented commands is the good part. Like it's the whole point of them. If I wanted to have a conversation I would find a person to have it with, because that's a thing people do. Computers are for predictable responses to predefined commands. 🤔
...the funneling of money from the general population to the people at the top of the economic hierarchy...?
@mttaggart Hey, I’m proud of my vegetable curler! 😆
@mttaggart information retrieval. Having something scan multiple sources and determine which links to follow, then prepare a list of relevant ones with summaries (to decide which ones to read) from a corporate wiki that has turned into a maze, is pretty nice.
@mttaggart the words "efficiency" and "productivity" don't seem to mean anything ordinary and understandable these days
@mttaggart
The problem they’re solving is having to pay people, it’s not to improve the process.
@mttaggart If you redefine "efficiency" as a measure of the stock price overvaluation of software vendors, you will have your answer.
@mttaggart rich people without talent were not extracting value from the masses nearly as efficiently as they could be.
@mttaggart
“Do you want to burn more money? Sure, we all do!”
#AI
(This joke accessible only to #GenX)
@mttaggart I'm not sure if the root of all this is a genuine belief that natural language control of systems and apps is going to be some sort of breakthrough, or if non-technical folks just think the nerds are gatekeeping the results from them with their wizard skills and think they can cut out the 'understanding' part and skip to results.
@DarcMoughty I don't know but if you read this, I don't think there were a lack of technical people in the process. https://blog.mozilla.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/278/files/2025/11/Mozilla-Summary-Portfolio-Strategy.pdf
@mttaggart I've read it now, thanks for the link. I do understand what they're getting at. I think they might be onto -somerhing-, but it seems far too early to 'bet the farm' on it, and I don't understand why they'd want to fragment the org to pursue this or bog down their flagship products with it.
I'm not sure how they'll structure things, but it seems to me that the easiest path (which they're already on) will be to pile a bunch of AI into the browser, and that's not what most of their users want.
IMO they should focus on the flagship products' core functionality. Not sure why they feel the need to be the ones stepping up on open source AI.
I'm also very skeptical that this is a realm they can step into without risking the whole org. They mention needs to find new funding, but this seems like an endeavor where they will drain their bank accounts to fight a fight they can't win, and I don't see any funding sources on the other side of the battle even if they succeed.
@DarcMoughty Also, they utterly failed to define "open source AI" in this entire document—because that's not a thing. The only language models that approach what users want are necessarily built from stolen work. That's not open source, no matter whether the weights are available.
Anyway this is a Mozilla subtoot. I'm warming up for a blog post on this demented strategy paper.
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