Hello, thank you for following up. I can’t explain what might have happened with your message on our support system, as we continue to receive messages regularly via our support tool.
Please note that Framasoft is not a company, but an association (a really small non-profit organisation). But that’s a bit off topic here.
Yes, we are well aware of all the issues surrounding generative AI, particularly AI chatbots.
We have several projects aimed at raising awareness of these issues (the following list is not even exhaustive):
- the website https://framamia.org, which explains how AI works and summarises the various issues it raises
- We regularly publish in-depth articles on AI Dans les algorithmes – Framablog (and if you read French, you will note that these are very critical articles)
- We publish a newsletter dedicated to AI: framiactu – Framablog
- We run a conference entitled: ‘It’s not AI you hate, it’s capitalism’, again highlighting the issues you mention, and much more. https://videos-libr.es/w/viZzsCMXAQmLLVihNqZKo1
- We are a member of the HIATUS coalition https://hiatus.ooo/en.html, led by our partner association ‘La Quadrature du Net’ https://www.laquadrature.net/about/. Again, this coalition cannot be suspected of being ‘pro-AI’.
In short, no, we do not like AI. At all.
So let’s keep things in perspective: Whisper is not ChatGPT, even if it’s built with the same toxic company. Putting them on the same level is like comparing a kilo of carrots to a kilo of meat, just because they’re both food.
I’m not saying that Whisper is an ‘ethical’ tool (I mention this in the conference above, NO generative AI can be ethical, whether free or not). As Whisper’s training data is not available in its entirety, there is no doubt that this AI reproduces biases (gender, ethnicity, social class, etc.).
However, the energy required both for training the model and, even more so, for its inference, has little to do with a conversational generative AI such as ChatGPT.
In short, yes, transcription requires energy, and no, these models are not ‘ethical’. Even models such as VOSK Offline Speech Recognition API - which is virtually no longer actively maintained and significantly less effective than Whisper - consume resources. Note that transcription models are evolving, and evolving quickly. Mistral just announced its model, Voxtral [Voxtral | Mistral AI], a few hours ago. Nothing (except time/money) would prevent PeerTube from using other models in the future.
You will not receive this confirmation, as we (Framasoft) do not prohibit the use of specific AI tools. For example, as here for transcription, or for translation, etc.
It is up to you to trust us (or not, which is perfectly OK) to know what we do and to be informed in advance of the choices we make, whether political or technical.
We have said it, written it, printed it, and repeated it: we would prefer a world without Generative AI. We consider ourselves informed about the various types of problems posed by this technology. From our privileged technical position, we could easily boycott any use of these tools.
But we are a community organisation dedicated to educating people about digital issues. Our mission is not to judge or condemn people who use this or that technology. Typically, we are ‘anti-Google’ both personally and collectively, but that does not mean we criticise people who use Google as a search engine or Facebook as a social network. Our job is to present and propose alternatives, not to mount advocacy campaigns.
Today, we do not encourage anyone to use transcription tools. I understand perfectly well that by giving the option to people with the skills and means to enable transcription with Whisper in PeerTube, you may think that we are facilitating the development of the use of these technologies. But in reality, it is a balancing act between not imposing how users should use the software (we are not God) and evaluating the impact of each new PeerTube feature (or any other software, for that matter).
There is no doubt that this position will disappoint you. I am (sincerely) sorry about that.
Once again: you can choose to trust us (in the same way that we ask you to trust us when we tell you that we do not monetise your data), or not.
If you do not or no longer trust us, you can of course suspend your donation to Framasoft and stop using our services.
Our position on generative AI, like all our positions, is not definitive. However, I can attempt an imperfect summary (what follows is my attempt to summarise a complex position; I know it would be simpler to have a black-and-white position, but we choose to add a little nuance to this binary position).
We fully recognise the threats posed by generative AI, particularly conversational AI. We have been documenting, informing and actively working on this subject for several months/years (see bullet point list above), and, without ambiguity, we would have preferred a world without GAI.
However, we do not work for ourselves as individuals. We are at the service of the wider public, including those who do not always share our ideas, convictions or practices.
The projects we produce do not seek to make us heralds or heroes of free software or privacy protection, but to offer tools (software or intellectual) that enable people to ‘better’ appropriate technologies while emancipating themselves as much as possible, and therefore often imperfectly, from the digital giants.
However, we would like to emphasise that we do not wish to use conversational AI (AI chatbots) in any context other than that described in our mission statement. Namely, to provide popular education on digital issues. Framasoft’s goal is to enable a world that we believe to be fairer, not to make the current situation worse.
(For information and transparency, this message has been translated using DeepL, a generative AI system that translates text for people who, like me, are not fluent in languages other than their native language.)