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Mozilla's opposition to Chrome's Prompt API

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Re: Mozilla's opposition to Chrome's Prompt API

#91

Post by ilaksh »

OuterVale wrote: post #12

Extremely glad to see Mozilla taking a stance here.

Archibald is anti-AI. 70+% of his public statements have demonstrated that.

He is more or less aligned with the current most common sentiment in the west which is largely publicly against AI.

But realistically it's just slow adaptation, network effects, etc.

To give an example, before the MLB rolled out the Automated Ball Strike system this year, last year maybe 65+% of the sentiment in discussions about it was negative or in some cases just neutral.

Now that it has rolled out, 95% of the sentiment online about ABS is positive. The main comment by far is, why didn't they do this before, and why don't they do it automatically on all pitches now.

There are certain cognitive and informational flow limitations in society that will cause this to be delayed, just like all major technological advancements.

But once it rolls out, the perspective you hear online will be about digital sovereignty/personal data autonomy, now we aren't required to send our data to an external provider for AI, why wasn't this available before. People will probably assume it was blocked because it reduced a major source of data for advertising or something.

And overall AI and robotics in the future will be seen as the greatest enabling factor for increased equality in society.

It's really just this underlying dislike of and disrespect for technology that much of the western public has. Which may turn out to be one of the reasons that we lose our de facto leadership position in the world.

Re: Mozilla's opposition to Chrome's Prompt API

#92

Post by pjmlp »

hmokiguess wrote: post #72

The nice thing about open protocols is that we don't have to endorse or use one implementation over another, yet, somehow, the browser monopoly continues to be a standing dilemma. There are nice projects, like ungoogled chromium, tor, and many more, but I find the biggest issue is that there isn't a voice out there for the average person and a project that connects with the masses. I think another issue is that a lot…

We start by not shipping Chrome with "native" applications instead of learning the platform APIs.

Followed by creating Web applications based on Web standards, instead of whatever Chrome does, and then complain about Firefox and Safari not being up to the game.

Re: Mozilla's opposition to Chrome's Prompt API

#93

Post by the42thdoctor »

This reminds me of the speech to text API, which already uses AI and is available on almost all browsers. So there's already precedent.

But most importantly this would enable us to finally write JavaScript like this:

const a = prompt("how much is 31c in Fahrenheit")

The future looks bright!

Re: Mozilla's opposition to Chrome's Prompt API

#94

Post by rafram »

ilaksh wrote: post #65
dannyw wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t Mozilla taking a stance against AI. It’s them articulating clear and logical reasons why the proposed API, in its current state, is bad for web interoperability.

Did they propose a specific alternative (non-extension) API?

There’s one obvious alternative:

   fetch("https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions", { ... });

Re: Mozilla's opposition to Chrome's Prompt API

#95

Post by ilaksh »

jedimastert wrote: post #86
ilaksh wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meaning you do not want text generation in the web API at all, or you think the prompt API needs to be different? And if so can you give one sentence on how it should change? https://github.com/runvnc/tersenet If you glance at that then you may see that I am for the idea of leaner alternatives to the current web platform. But in the context of the existing web API which has just about everything and the whole kitchen…

> Meaning you do not want text generation in the web API at all, or you think the prompt API needs to be different? Not OP but I think you are misunderstanding the interaction as a whole here. The Chromium team made a proposal, then the Chromium team asked the Firefox team for a position on the proposal. Whether or not the Firefox team or anyone on the Firefox team has any goals around AI or whatever, this response w…

You didn't read my comment carefully enough. It was not about AI in general. It was about the text generation API. And it is perfectly reasonable to ask if he wants to reject the feature entirely or if he can give a one sentence overview of how it might be fixed.

There are a lot of people reading his position. One or two additional clarifying sentences to spell it out for people skimming is not such an unreasonable ask.

Re: Mozilla's opposition to Chrome's Prompt API

#96

Post by halJordan »

youre-wrong3 wrote: post #3
shevy-java wrote: post #2

> This will result in Mozilla and Apple having to licence Google's model, or ship a model that's quirks-compatible with the Google model in order to be interoperable. It may also become difficult for Chrome to update its own model for the same reasons. Google is again doing Evil. I am very annoyed that Google kind of de-facto controls the www (through chrome, let's be honest here). We really need to change this. I do…

Only have yourselves to blame. Chrome made the internet better but everyone put their fingers in their ears about it getting worse at the same time.

It was hard to stomach the "I looove Chrome. It can do no wrong" but these "Why did we let google control everything" comments are even worse

Re: Mozilla's opposition to Chrome's Prompt API

#97

Post by ilaksh »

rafram wrote: post #94
ilaksh wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they propose a specific alternative (non-extension) API?

There’s one obvious alternative: fetch("https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions", { ... });

Right and that means people have to send their data to an external service.

Give it X months (or years??) and people will realize this is actually a privacy/data autonomy issue.

It's just dominated right now by the anti-AI/anti-technology sentiment in the west. That will gradually go away as more people use AI and robotics and realize how wrong they were about it.

Re: Mozilla's opposition to Chrome's Prompt API

#98

Post by hatmanstack »

dannyw wrote: post #52
austin-cheney wrote: post #40

I wonder if this is a generational thing of fresh young people that already cannot live without LLMs versus crusty old people that don’t want to require a super computer just to run a web browser that violates all their privacy. To me this sounds like the point where people start looking at and developing alternatives to the browser/web.

This isn’t Mozilla taking a stance against AI. It’s them articulating clear and logical reasons why the proposed API, in its current state, is bad for web interoperability.

So I guess the question would be, "What makes this acceptable Tech". I don't know how you get there without offering some type of "Search" like choice for open models. We all know how that turned out.

Maybe Mozilla can save itself by getting paid to serve Google's model as default rather than another providers. Would replace the revenue stream they lost.

Re: Mozilla's opposition to Chrome's Prompt API

#99

Post by franga2000 »

pjmlp wrote: post #92
hmokiguess wrote: post #72

The nice thing about open protocols is that we don't have to endorse or use one implementation over another, yet, somehow, the browser monopoly continues to be a standing dilemma. There are nice projects, like ungoogled chromium, tor, and many more, but I find the biggest issue is that there isn't a voice out there for the average person and a project that connects with the masses. I think another issue is that a lot…

We start by not shipping Chrome with "native" applications instead of learning the platform APIs. Followed by creating Web applications based on Web standards, instead of whatever Chrome does, and then complain about Firefox and Safari not being up to the game.

I really don't see how Electron is connected here. When you're an Electron app, you really don't have to care about which web APIs Chrome implements, you can just use the native NodeJS equivalents, which will usually give you a better UX anyways.

But absolutely on the second point. A standard with one implementation is not a standard. Regardless of market share, in a market with three providers, if two out of three don't support something, you have no business using it. It unhealthy for everyone involved.

Re: Mozilla's opposition to Chrome's Prompt API

#100

Post by AntiUSAbah »

I find this a weird discussion at the current point.

Shouldn't be there a basic process for allowing such an API as a alpha people can play around with and then there will be adjustments?

No one will start using this in production if they don't have a very good and specific use case. I mean you don't just run 2gb ML models in your browser today on a massive scale.

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