AI Preferences Working Group Materials

IETF 125 AIPREF Working Group Minutes

Mark: We won’t be having momentus discussions. This will mostly be status updates for the rest of the IETF. We take the code of conduct seriously. We want to keep it a professional and productive environment.

Mark: Described interim meeting in March 2026. We have taken a lot of the contentious terms out of the vocabulary. Now we are working through the issues list. We make progress at iterim meetings, but then there’s little progress between them. Hope to use issues list to continue progress. Bring new content to April iterim meeting in Toronto. Our current issue list is as much as it was in the meeting (Link: https://github.com/ietf-wg-aipref/drafts/wiki/Use-Proposals)

Mark: “ai-output” seemed promising in Zurich, but has been criticised since. “search” term has been widely discussed. Concern that if people opt out of AI training, you’ll be excluded from search results. Some felt that this is an imbalance of power. We’ve come to understand that essentially all search now has AI under the covers

(There was a Wi-Fi outage in the room at this point)

Richard Barnes spoke remotely: Not a lot has changed since we met

Mark: Some have advocated Use Cases a means of making progress. Divided into three categories: Training, Use, and Preferences

Mark: Interim scheduled for April in Toronto. We want to use it to hone terms in the drafts about training, etc., preparing them to be shipped

Mark: People brought up purpose-based and use-based preferences. Ask people to carefully consider that, as it may provide a way forward

(The Wi-Fi outage was resolved at this point)

Mark: Our goal, we have a working group scheduled in April in Toronto, we want this to be a productive meeting, we can try to to hone the stuff that remains in the drafts. And have other proposals on the table for the other things that people want

Benjamin Curtis: I have some questions relating the charter and the specifics of the AI press.

Mark: I think there are aspects of what you’re describing that could fit into our vocabulary. What we’re running up against is because we’re chartered in a way where the vocabulary is separate from the attachment mechanism.

Mark: Concerns about interactions between preferences and “The Open Web”. For instance, interactions with assistive technologies for the disabled. User rights. But we’re not a legal framework - just a preferences framework. This is a bit of a minefield.

Benjamin Curtis: This is out of customer commons

Mark and Suresh: We are trying to finish a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) at this point.

Martin: I’m interested in what Benjamin is doing

Suresh: If you can’t make it to Toronto, it’s a full interim meeting with remote participation

We ended early after 25 minutes

Source on GitHub