Adding my voice into the choir, because apparently according to Reddit there aren't enough of us. This direction is especially concerning if the AI push is coming from upper management, because the last thing I want to see is Firefox going down the way of Ecosia.
Now, could there be truly ethical AI? I admit that the mention of "AI" by itself now leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, but I recognize that it is caused by the scrupulous actors leading the tech world and not of the technology at its core. To not screw up, Firefox either has to build its own LLMs from the ground up with transparent, consent-driven sourcing of its training data and initiatives to support data centers run primarily/entirely by renewable energy. If it cannot go through with such an effort, then it can only host models built by others with the same considerations. The moment it licenses or pays any bottom-barrel entities such as OpenAI is the moment I jump ship.
