Changes to the proposed Web Machine Learning Working Group charter

Dear Web & Machine Learning Community Group,

As Anssi pointed out in February, the W3C Advisory Committee has been
reviewing a proposed charter for a Working Group who would bring the
WebNN API and possibly the Model Loader API on the W3C standardization
track:

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webmachinelearning/2021Feb/0004.html

Following the input received in that review [1], we're proposing to
incorporate changes in the charter before its final approval by the W3C
Director.

To match the request for a better defined scope in the charter to
reflect the known scope of the WebNN API, the scope of the charter has
been refined with inspiration from the charter used by the Web & Machine
Learning Community Group.

The tentative work on a Model Loader API has been clarified as depending
on the availability of a well-defined standard format for Machine
Learning models.

The list of groups with which to coordinate has been extended to include
the WebRTC Working Group (due to the desire to have WebNN operate on
media streams) and ECMA TC39 (due to the desire to coordinate on
possible extensions to the JavaScript language syntax).

All the changes above can be seen in
https://github.com/w3c/machine-learning-charter/pull/15/

In addition, given multiple input from the Advisory Committee review
noting ethical risks with the use of Machine Learning, we proposed the
following additional changes:
* specific coordination with the TAG to integrate lessons from their
Ethical Web Principles
https://github.com/w3c/machine-learning-charter/pull/16/
* a commitment from the group to develop a Note documenting ethical
issues associated with using Machine Learning on the Web, and
documenting ethical considerations in the normative documents developed
by the group https://github.com/w3c/machine-learning-charter/pull/17

Several reviewers expressed concern that the WebNN API was proposed at
the wrong layer (either too low or too high level). We are not proposing
any change to the charter on this - following up with the reviewers, we
pointed out previous research done by the Community Group in this space
showing that the proposed level has emerged as the right trade-off
between optimal performance and widest interoperability.

You can see the updated charter here:
  https://w3c.github.io/machine-learning-charter/charter.html

and this link shows the changes highlighted in HTML:
https://services.w3.org/htmldiff?doc1=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2021%2F02%2Fproposed-machine-learning-charter.html&doc2=https%3A%2F%2Fw3c.github.io%2Fmachine-learning-charter%2Fcharter.html

Please contact me if any of these changes feel problematic, before April 16.

Best regards,

Dom

1. A subset of that feedback is available publicly:
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-new-work/2021Mar/0000.html
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-new-work/2021Mar/0004.html
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-new-work/2021Mar/0015.html

Received on Wednesday, 7 April 2021 15:23:02 UTC