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Mistral X Mozilla: Private, Multilingual AI Browsing

591 points · 207 comments · vertigoruntime

  1. peri-cl · · focus · HN ↗
    This is an excellent use case for completely local, small model inference, yet for inexplicable reasons Mozilla wants to normalize uploading your entire private browsing history to a cloud.

    These (Mistral's and Mozilla's) marketing pages aren't candid enough to clearly explain the difference between local and cloud inference, and that they're asking you to consent to enabling the latter. I'd call that the bare minimum of ethics. If you're in a position of authority over your less technical users, you are ethically obligated to give them the full picture of what are you doing and why they should consent.

    (Aside to any Mozilla people who might be reading HN, your page here[0] has an oversight, it advertises this model as "Mistral Small 4" but the hyperlink is to OpenAI's model card for gpt-oss-120b).

    [0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;kb&#x2F;smart-window-models" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;kb&#x2F;smart-window-models

    1. padenot · · focus · HN ↗
      Thanks for mentioning the mistake on the link, it&#x27;s been reported internally.
      1. HelloUsername · · focus · HN ↗
        The &quot;Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite&quot; also points incorrectly (?) to <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;storage.googleapis.com&#x2F;deepmind-media&#x2F;Model-Cards&#x2F;Gemini-2-5-Flash-Lite-Model-Card.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;storage.googleapis.com&#x2F;deepmind-media&#x2F;Model-Cards&#x2F;Ge...
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