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

@made @firefoxwebdevs There's already lots of work for on-device ML: https://searchfox.org/firefox-main/search?q=toolkit%2Fcomponents%2Fml

Integrating models into a finalized product with the wide spectrum of end-user devices is tricky though, so it has to be done with care.

@firefoxwebdevs As worded, and if we can trust Mozilla, then the acceptable answer should be No for these reasons: ML is not AI, and on-device means nothing is sent out of the device. In exchange you get free translation. Win.

BUT… there’s the trust issue now.

And what we REALLY need is not an AI kill switch but more of a “data transfer/phone-home kill switch”, almost like a firewall, where we know the browser is not taking any data and sending it to a device we don’t control ourselves.

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

They're not LLMs. They're trained on open data.

Should translation be disabled if the AI 'kill switch' is active?

@zzt I posted this poll after a meeting where we discussed the design of the kill switch, and there was uncertainty around translations. I want to make sure the community's voice is represented in these discussions.

@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.

@mdavis folks want to disable 'AI' for more reasons than privacy. Privacy is important of course, but folks are also concerned about the training data, and energy used for the training.

@firefoxwebdevs But if the ML/AI training work is processing on the device and not is shared off device, and it is in support of a feature like translating a page (which should be prompted/selectable) then what’s the issue? You can say no and nothing happens. Or you can say yes and the worse that happens is you chew up some local power on your laptop or PC. Or are you saying that even though the translation happens on the device, the RESULT of that training data is sent back out?

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

They're not LLMs. They're trained on open data.

Should translation be disabled if the AI 'kill switch' is active?

@joepie91 agreed.

@firefoxwebdevs we're not in those meetings so we don't know what all is actually included within the AI module suite, or even if that has been fully defined internally at this point, so of course there won't be a clean consensus externally from us on what "it" is and if it should be included or excluded, as it's up to our interpretation.

@firefoxwebdevs Like many others, I have a metric ton of thoughts on this topic. I might even try writing something to consolidate them.

In the meantime: I don't consider the translation models to be part of the major AI hype I loathe so much. Machine translation of language has been happening for a long time and has proven largely useful, and it lacks the stink of desperation which so many of the generative applications of recent times carry.

While I'm already thinking about it: even the name "AI kill switch" feels bad to think about. I know that "AI" is the buzzword that gets upper management giddy and which the untrained public is now used to hearing, but the fact of the matter is that if you can't "sell" a feature without appealing to buzzwords, your feature wasn't worth the time and effort put into it.

@mdavis I believe it's a moral stance due to how the models were produced.

@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").

@firefoxwebdevs Hookay… then this is less about a local feature or data sharing and more about an overall “Made with AI” concern where nothing related to AI *at*all*ever* taints the user’s browser, in or out. In that case, if the user turns on the AI kill switch, it should totally kill anything having to do with AI for those who take that position.

That’s an issue with these polls — too much undisclosed nuance to be able to answer properly.

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

They're not LLMs. They're trained on open data.

Should translation be disabled if the AI 'kill switch' is active?

@zzt I posted this poll after a meeting where we discussed the design of the kill switch, and there was uncertainty around translations. I want to make sure the community's voice is represented in these discussions.

@firefoxwebdevs But wait… what if the developers used AI to help develop the code in the browser itself? Does that mean AI kill switch purists should then rather not even use the product at all?

@tasket @angelfeast https://paracrawl.eu/moredata says "This is a release of text from Internet Archive.... The project also used CommonCrawl which is already public." Those crawls quite famously/infamously include copyrighted content. I don't see anything to suggest they filtered those datasets for public domain annotations. (Not that such an annotation would be enforceable, but it would at least be an indication of intent.)