Re: [w3ctag/design-reviews] Updated review of Web Neural Network API (Issue #1072)

anssiko left a comment (w3ctag/design-reviews#1072)

Thank you @matatk & TAG crew for your review feedback! Below is an update on our progress:

>On https://github.com/webmachinelearning/webnn/issues/821, "2D" is an initialism (for "2 Dimensional" or similar), and so the guidance in https://w3ctag.github.io/design-principles/#casing-rules says that it should be "All caps, except when the first word in a method or property".

We are proceeding per your guidance in https://github.com/webmachinelearning/webnn/issues/821

>We would appreciate if the WG would evaluate the likely impacts on sustainability from introducing this API, perhaps in collaboration with the [Sustainable Web IG](https://www.w3.org/groups/ig/sustainableweb/). There are several competing likely effects, including the comparative energy efficiency of personal devices vs datacenters, the greater efficiency of WebNN over WebGPU for the same workload, increased use of neural nets as they get easier to access, faster device obsolescence if older devices can't effectively run the workloads this API encourages, and likely other considerations. Any sustainability impacts might be balanced by increased utility and privacy, but it would be good to know what we're signing up for.

The group has initiated this work, tracked in https://github.com/webmachinelearning/webnn/issues/861

>It would be good to have official standards positions from Mozilla and Webkit. Simply participating in a WG isn't a reliable signal of the browser engines' support for a feature.

This review request has been updated with links to the respective standards positions.

>We endorse the concerns that Chrome expressed in https://github.com/webmachinelearning/webnn/issues/453, that WebNN is a proposal that browsers implement a compilation and optimization engine for yet another high level language, on top of the Javascript, Wasm, and WebGPU engines that we've already signed up for. WebNN might be worth doing, but it's a relatively high cost, and we'd like some evidence that it's going to pay off.

The group discussed this and notes WebNN API is not a new language, but a new JS API that unlocks new devices that cannot be reached from Wasm and WebGPU.

To demonstrate the value of this API, the group works closely with implementers and uses mechanisms such as Developer Previews and Origin Trials to test the API with real developers and workloads.

>Inkeeping with the above questions and concerns, we are closing this review as satisfied with concerns, and look forward to hearing in due course with regards to sustainability, and the other issues raised above, as you continue to develop this work.

Thank you again, we will continue in the dedicated issues and will share updates as appropriate.

>Finally, we also want to acknowledge the great and valuable work that your group has done in creating the [Ethical Principles for Web Machine Learning](https://www.w3.org/TR/webmachinelearning-ethics/) - thank you!

Much appreciated, I have relayed your thank you to the group.

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Received on Friday, 6 June 2025 09:11:05 UTC