[Tag Review] - Cost of computing #171
Description
From: w3ctag/design-reviews#1093 (comment)
We have a concern that authors could use this API to offload the “cost of computing” to local devices and end users. The TAG is ambivalent about whether this is appropriate: if wealthy sites that users are already paying for, perhaps by watching ads, also offload their compute to users, that seems inappropriate. If hobby sites with no revenue ask their users to provide their own computation, that seems appropriate. This sort of cost transfer is already possible with existing JS, Wasm, and WebGPU APIs, but the size of local devices has always limited the amount the user could contribute. With a local-only Prompt API, that’s still true, but as this API also envisions allowing the computation to run in the cloud, wealthy users might have a lot more resources to offer. Of course, wealthy users can also pay sites directly, but abusing their AI subscription might act as a form of subtle (and inefficient) micropayment, and so be easier to get them to accept. Have you thought about ways to ensure users have the leverage to push back against these forms of abuse?
With respect to abuse of local computation (similar to cryptomining), the mitigations are likely to be shared with JS, Wasm, and WebGPU, so it would be fine for the Prompt explainer and spec to just refer to some existing explanation of the mitigations used for those APIs. We see @domenic’s mention of #security-runtime in reply to the earlier comment about “Potential for computation abuse”, but that section addresses interference with parallel uses of the Prompt API, rather than taking value from the user by running computations on their device. We also don't think permissions policy is enough, since the top-level site can also abuse the local resources or grant permission to a third-party that it shouldn't trust.