this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2024
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They seem to have a foregone conclusion that AI is a positive thing, rather than something that should be eradicated like smallpox or syphilis.
"Responsible use of AI" could mean things like providing small offline models for client-side translation. They're actually building that feature and the preview is already amazing.
Not just building it's shipping by default. That is, language detection and code that displays a popup asking you whether you want to download the actual translation model is shipping by default. About twelve megs per model, so 24 for a language pair.
IMO, there's no such thing as responsible AI use. All of the uses so far are bad, and I can't see any that would work as well as a trained human. Even worse, there's zero accountability; when an AI makes a mistake and gets people killed, no executives or programmers will ever face any criminal charges because the blame will be too diffuse.
I'm no AI enthusiast, but this is clear hyperbole. Of course there are uses for it; it's not magic, it's just technology. You'll have been using some of them for years before the AI fad came along and started labelling everything.
Translation services are a good example. Google Translate and Bing Translate have both been using machine learning neural networks as their core technology for a decade and more. There's no other way of doing it that produces anything close to as good a result. And yes, paying a human translator might get you good results too, but realistically that's not a competitive option for the vast majority of uses (nobody is paying a translator to read restaurant menus or train station signage to them).
This whole AI assistant fad can do one as far as I'm concerned, but the technologies behind the fad are here to stay.
There is no gray. Only black and white!
So who should be held accountable when (mis)use of AI results in a needless death? Or worse?
Let's say a company creates an AI taxi that runs you over leaving you without legs. Who are you going to sue?
"Oh it's grey, so I'll have a dollar from each shareholder." That doesn't sound right to me.
I hate AI as much as the next AI-sceptic but that argument is just nonsense. We have plenty of machinery and other company owned assets already that could injure a human being without a direct human intervention causing the injury. Every telephone pole rotting through and falling on someone would legally be a similar situation.
Who's getting killed because of the "translate page" button in my browser?
There are valid uses for AI. It is much better at pattern recognition than people. Apply that to healthcare and it could be a paradigm shift in early diagnosis of conditions that doctors wouldn't think to look for until more noticeable symptoms occur.
The "translate page" button in my browser is evil? Get a grip.
You're going to upset a lot of chess players if you get rid of all AI.
It's because it is a positive thing. Just because awful businesses hijacked and abused it doesn't mean it's all bad. Mozilla is approaching it in a positive way imo.
And what, exactly, is positive about it, that has no associated negative outcomes?
Specific to generative AI, I think client side generation can be a good thing, such as sentiment analysis or better word suggestions/autocomplete.
A number of other helpful tasks have negative outcomes, but if someone is going to use it, then I prefer they use the version of the tech that minimizes those negative outcomes. Whether Mozilla should be focussing on building that is a different matter though
AI that isn't generative AI has a lot of positive uses, but usually that's not what these discussions are about