The Prompt API has some advantages like being a little simpler for some things and some potential to standardize a little bit more in some way, but it looks like from this that it will be delayed unfortunately.
However, WebLLM (a library, not actual Web API) https://github.com/mlc-ai/web-llm is more capable and will already work using WebGPU.
If that was a good argument to not support an LLM feature, then it would be a reason to not add it to any platform API. And yet, it has been added to numerous platforms already.
Different models are just a core aspect of how the technology works.
It's like a canvas can have different possible width and height depending on the device or it's orientation. Or the geolocation API giving more or less accuracy depending on the device. Or Speech Synthesis sounding different depending on the device.
This is really just anti-AI sentiment rather than being constructive.
For now, it needs a permissions UI if it doesn't already have one. And maybe at some point they will add a n IQ level like low, medium, high or something. But developers are going to rely on the specific model 90% of the time anyway if they care about it.
What's going to change is really just that the AI hatred will die down some as people realize how much it helps them, and people will realize not having this feature in Firefox is a failure for personal data autonomy.
And the TOU that are related in Chrome being problematic is an argument FOR Firefox to add this feature, without problematic model terms.
The important part was the following paragraph(s) that explained why this coupling is a compelling problem. It's not the same as just having a platform API.
We have different gps reliability per device because they have actual hardware doing that.
Why exactly couldn't models, iq levels, tuning and system prompts be interchangeable in an API for this? Why not let users and devs pick which model to bring or point to one they're paying for, or what have you?
I don't see a world where 90 percent of users of this API pick the same underlying model. It doesn't seem like there's any kind of centralization with ai like that yet.
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.
You're a politician. The sentiment leans anti in this cultural context at this time and so do your statements overall, such as if we look at this one and the rest and tally each one as positive or negative. Underlying you are more anti-AI than neutral. So your reply may have been technically true but it was deliberately misleading.
But you haven't really made a technical argument because your objection is not really technical. It's a type of politics.
It's obviously extremely extremely useful to have a simple API for accessing an LLM. It needs permissions like most things and the ability to limit download sizes/specific or maybe block use of external services if desired.
But anyway people will just fall back to a slightly worse alternative like a wrapper around WebLLM (that wraps WebGPU).
It's probably not politically feasible for you to take a different stance anyway.
>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.
MLB's ABS does not use AI for its ball tracking. And it has specific payoffs particular to its context from four years of testing and wiel defined limits on use cases that don't necessarily generalize to issues surrounding AI and it's tradeoffs.
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?
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 sink in it (hundreds of sub-APIs), I do not think it will really help anyone at this point just just stop adding features, especially major ones.
The web is basically an overlay operating system and has been for many years.
> 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 was simply "We do not like this proposal for these reasons..."
How to fix those issues really isn't the Firefox team's job and also wasn't part of the question asked by the Chromium team.
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.
> 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.
I do think it is a bit unwarranted, actually. This isn't a press release, it's a technical discussion somewhat deep into a technical process that's open for archival purposes. His audience is not people skimming through, it's the Chromium team and other members of the standards body.
You're sort of overhearing a conversation and injecting yourself into it.
And so are you injecting yourself and objecting to me even discussing on HN.
And this is not really a technical issue. It's a worldview issue no matter how much you or others try to pretend it's a technical problem or that I am violating etiquette or something.
> And this is not really a technical issue. It's a worldview issue no matter how much you or others try to pretend it's a technical problem or that I am violating etiquette or something.
I'm actually so curious what you think is going on here
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.
>Right and that means people have to send their data to an external service.
Nothing in this proposal claims it has to be a local AI. That just happens to be the implementation by Chrome and Edge (for now at least, I'd imagine Google will eventually start moving this API towards hosted Gemini).
That's an important aspect of this that should really be part of the discussion on GitHub. But I've been told I'm not qualified to interject so I am not going to bother.
I will use WebLLM if I want something like this (with local AI guaranteed).
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