Meeting minutes
Accessibility of Machine Learning and Generative AI draft.
janina: Still working on this.
W3C Web and AI Interest Group.
jasonjgw: If anyone is interested in trying browser based client side AI then this is coming.
jasonjgw: advantages are lower latency and taking the load away from servers.
jasonjgw: On accessibility there was a discussion of providing mechanisms to convey whether parts of a webpage are AI generated.
jasonjgw: There was other discussion of accessibility benefits.
janina: we should maybe offere to re-review the Principles of ethical AI if anything has changed with it since we last read it. We can flag that we are interested in it so we get notified when changes are made.
jasonjgw: I think the main work has been on the specifications work.
Johan Galtung, - Development, Environment and Technology (1976, UNCTAD).
janina: There was discussion of the technology itself being dangerous to which I posited that it's the human controlling the technology rather than the tool itself.
jasonjgw: Johan argued that technology is the carrier of the genetic code of the society that produces it. Ie it tends to reinforce the culture and assumptions of the society that creates it.
<scott_h> apologies, my phone I was using for zoom shtu down and having trouble reconnecting. Will catch up on minutes if i can't get back on
jasonjgw: Cory Doktorow wrote a piece about the dangers of AI as he saw it which were along the lines of it's impact on the workforce in displacing the need for people. He used an example of a person driving a car vs. a delivery driver whose actions are monitored and dictated by a computer algorithm. The latter lacks agency.
jasonjgw: He suggested that most of the usual concerns arounf AI will go away but the issue of using AI to replace high skilled labour with low skilled labour will become more relevant.
janina: I'll be working things out to participate in this group. I'll aim to get our label on it so we get updates.
Machine learning and generative AI: observations and conclusions.
janina: I was happy to see that Gemini will copy it's output to the clipboard for you.
jasonjgw: there was an interesting podcast talking about using AI for system administration purposes.
jasonjgw: apparently if you give an agent the right API keys and access to a system it can manage it for you.
janina: that raises a lot of security concerns.
jasonjgw: and the AI costs can rise very quickly from the AI's use of your account.
jasonjgw: it's going to start affecting our hardware purchases as more chips have ML optimised hardware built into them. We should probably expect more local ML models running on devices.
Miscellaneous topics.
jasonjgw: not much to report apart from interesting work related to tactile display technology
jasonjgw: I got the monarch working with a screenreader recently although not in my usual working environment. The assumptions for drivers are that there is only a single line so there's work needs to be done to suppport multiline displays.
jasonjgw: All the screenreaders will need to adapt to handle multiline displays.
jasonjgw: There are auracast deplyments starting to happen.
JPaton: https://
jasonjgw: One example I heard about was a deplyment in a busy rail station.