Article by Edd Gent: “Suddenly, “open source” is the latest buzzword in AI circles. Meta has pledged to create open-source artificial general intelligence. And Elon Musk is suing OpenAI over its lack of open-source AI models.
Meanwhile, a growing number of tech leaders and companies are setting themselves up as open-source champions.
But there’s a fundamental problem—no one can agree on what “open-source AI” means.
On the face of it, open-source AI promises a future where anyone can take part in the technology’s development. That could accelerate innovation, boost transparency, and give users greater control over systems that could soon reshape many aspects of our lives. But what even is it? What makes an AI model open source, and what disqualifies it?
The answers could have significant ramifications for the future of the technology. Until the tech industry has settled on a definition, powerful companies can easily bend the concept to suit their own needs, and it could become a tool to entrench the dominance of today’s leading players.
Entering this fray is the Open Source Initiative (OSI), the self-appointed arbiters of what it means to be open source. Founded in 1998, the nonprofit is the custodian of the Open Source Definition, a widely accepted set of rules that determine whether a piece of software can be considered open source.
Now, the organization has assembled a 70-strong group of researchers, lawyers, policymakers, activists, and representatives from big tech companies like Meta, Google, and Amazon to come up with a working definition of open-source AI…(More)”.