Firefox uses on-device downloaded-on-demand ML models for privacy-preserving translation.

@mage_of_dragons @cassidy @firefoxwebdevs We also know exactly what lies in store for the current slate of AI: 20 years of funding drought, just like all its ancestors

@tasket It would be, much in the way that "guaranteed not to turn pink in the can" is a valid description of bad salmon [1]. A disingenuous mislead from what people really care about in the product.

[1] I know it didn't happen. It's a good metaphor.

@firefoxwebdevs My closest answer would be "no", but I think the question is kind of mis-phrased here, and that's probably going to lead to a confusing and potentially misleading outcome.

The problem that people have is not with "AI" as a generalized category, but with the current generation of thieving, climate-destroying, grifting systems that are marketed as AI to an overwhelming degree - notably LLMs and "generative AI", but really anything with those inconsiderate properties.

If your kill switch is presented as an "AI kill switch", then depending on the person they're either going to understand that as "exploitative tech", or as "machine learning", and so make different assumptions as to whether local translation is included in that.

So I think you'll have to be a lot more explicit about what you mean; either by describing clearly what the kill-switch includes, or what it excludes, right in the place where the option is offered. Otherwise it's damned if you do, damned if you don't; depending on whether you include translations, either one or another group is going to be upset with the unexpected behaviour.

So, ethically, if the translation feature is built on ethically collected data, and it has no outsized climate impact, then I would not consider it something that needs to be included in a "get rid of all of it" kill switch. But to convey this clearly to users, both that and why it isn't included should be explained right there with the button, with potentially a second-step option to disable it anyway if someone still feels uncomfortable with it.

That way you've transparently communicated to users and shown that you have nothing up your sleeve by immediately and proactively offering them an option to disable that, too, if they have already shown interest in removing "AI" features.

@twifkak I think you're mixing up "We do not own" with "We do not have rights to".

@firefoxwebdevs
Y'all know as well as we do this feature-creep junk belongs in extensions - if anywhere at all. It does NOT belong in or anywhere near core.

Please keep the world's browser lean and healthy and strong. We need all the help we can get.

@liquor_american @zzt @pixel @firefoxwebdevs As the only remaining cross-platform browser that is not chromium, Mozilla deserves nothing but pressure to do better. Defending Mozilla about anything other than making Gecko better is giving them permission to eventually be just another chromium skin

@zzt @firefoxwebdevs Sorry, but I just cannot escape the call for #ShamelessPlug (though, as usual, #IHaveNothingToSell

https://mastodon.art/@aaribaud/110721997413550131

@tasket Perhaps. Show me what rights they have to it.

> A web browser should load web pages, allow you to interact with them ...

I would point out that translating a web page written in a non-native language allows me to interact with said page. Your argument can go both ways.

@joepie91 yeah, I agree with all that, but even tech folks are asking for a way to 'get rid of AI'. I'm pretty certain if we tried to redefine what they're asking for, it would be received poorly.

@twifkak They're using the "PD" mark, thus public domain.

@firefoxwebdevs That's exactly the motivation behind my suggestion, though - I've attached a mockup in an additional reply to hopefully make it clearer, but the idea here is to not redefine it so much as it is to explicitly pick a definition, and then provide an additional option for the broader definition, so that a user can essentially pick whichever definition they are following without getting into the technical weeds too much.

@twifkak Also notice that Mastodon instances are using LibreTranslate.

Has that been debated as well?

@firefoxwebdevs Automatic translations are good and an internet in which people don't feel like they can't speak their native tongue for fear of losing their audience can only be a good thing.

Not sure how any reasonable person can believe that such a domain-specific model begets similar ethical objections as modern LLMs.

You know, folks don't hate AI because they're scared of neural networks...

@tasket @twifkak seems to me like that refers to the dataset, not to the source material. if the source material was truly public domain, that information is not easy for me to find.

@firefoxwebdevs I’d say keep the translation thing and simply lose all the other LLM/GenAI/chatbot stuff altogether*. I think this is an excellent marketing opportunity. There are plenty of people highly skeptical of “AI”. This is a big market! You could be the next Brother, winning by refraining from shooting yourself in the foot (https://www.theverge.com/23642073/best-printer-2023-brother-laser-wi-fi-its-fine). And you’ll be ahead of the curve when The Bubble pops.
I’m not kidding.

(*they can still be opt in plugins)

@m0rpk @firefoxwebdevs quite honestly, you're off the mark, **a lot**.
A browser with a built-in translator is a door opener for the open web for so many people that don't read English well enough to benefit from the dominant corpus of technological, cultural and scientific websites.
Firefox could indeed remove that functionality and instead of letting people translate websites on their phone make them use the google translate app that directly. Congrats on how you've advocated for the open web.

@flxtr @firefoxwebdevs as someone who used these in the early 2000s: no, it's not. It's not as good as DeepL, but it's worlds ahead of machine translation in the 2000s.

@firefoxwebdevs @joepie91 i'm a "tech folk". Just give us a version of firefox with zero AI. Translation can either be an extension or not there. We ask of you to supply a base for broSing the web, the rest is what the community delivers.

We won't ask you to integrate ad blockers, but we have them.
We won't ask you to integrate quick procy switchers, but we have them.

Stop the feature creep and go back to the roots, make a very good browser with extension support and let people make the rest.

@angelfeast @twifkak No, I don't think so. It says this (with a takedown compliance process posted afterward)...

License

These data are released under this licensing scheme: PD

We do not own any of the text from which these data has been extracted.
We license the actual packaging of these parallel data under the Creative Commons CC0 license ("no rights reserved").