Open source AI must win

george_max

With open-weight AI, there might not be an incentive to put large sums of capital towards training / research. There might be a donation fund of some sorts, but it certainly won't reach the level of fundraising that the frontier labs are receiving. Because of this, I think it might not be possible to have AI *only* open-weight; major players like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google will likely stay for good, with better models than open-source versions. I think it might look something like Photoshop & GIMP, with Photoshop being a frontier lab, and GIMP being the open-weight model. GIMP is decent for many different image editing workflows, but Photoshop is just better . I would definitely prefer to have an open-weight model better than frontier labs'. Though I don't think it's possible.

glerk

it is inevitable that it will win information wants to be free

em-bee

what is Open Source AI even? to me Open Source, like Free Software, is something i can run on my own computer. any AI system that runs on a computer that i do not control is by my definition not Open Source. so how then can Open Source AI win? it can't even compete. even if we collect enough money and create a dedicated Open Source organization to build and run a community owned AI datacenter, how does that help? so what exactly is the demand here?

matheusmoreira

Winning is a tall order. I'm just hoping it'll get good enough while allowing us to run it locally with no idiotic "safety" controls or censorship of any sort. Looks like the best open weight models are at Sonnet level, if they get to Opus 4.6 level it's gonna be perfect.

avaer

I agree with sentiment and mission, but the goal is inseparable from politics at this point. Being Open Source (tm) will not protect you from the government/others imposing controls on your silicon or what it is allowed to do, which is already happening around the world. Even having the models be open source won't fix the regulation or economic incentives. Which is not something you can compress into a couple of paragraphs. AI is civilizational infrastructure and it needs civilizational solutions. Not just source.

impure

Not to be that guy, but the correct term is Open Weight LLM. And I’d argue it already has. Many open models are already very competitive with closed models at a fraction of the cost.

MaxPock

Were it not for China, America would have restricted the most advanced models from being used outside the US. NATO members would have access to GPT-4, with some countries entirely blocked from AI. Biden's GPU controls should give you an idea. Thank you, China. Open source AI must win.

mrcwinn

Quick, someone start open data center and open energy system and open water supply.

CharlesW

Can we assume that the author isn't using "Opensource" to mean "Openweights"? Or are we still collectively brainwashed by the strategic false equivalence established by Big AI CMOs?

gslepak

Where does Anthropic or OpenAI winning leave us? Dependents of an AI-megacorp for our "facts"? Our software? Our work? It's possible these companies will become everyone's boss, and will dictate to everyone what everyone is allowed to work on, think, say, do, believe, etc. Before Big Tech springs that trap, we must support and divert resources to open models.

wewewedxfgdf

Yeah except for all the money it costs to do well.

gnarlouse

BAP BAP BAP goes the Billionaire Alignment Problem

danielrmay

I hope the news moves this debate past "open weights vs. closed APIs" as the only axis. Open weights matter, definitely, but applied AI also needs open infrastructure around the model and it feels a bit like I'm yelling into the abyss highlighting the future we're incentivizing - cognition rented from a few institutions with access changing based on policy, geopolitics and platform incentives like advertising

b33j0r

Available components must win. I’ve often been a critic of open weights and open architectures that give very few normal people access. What’s the point of releasing the plans for a nuclear reactor if no one can have the fuel?

nektro

the public only wins once we shut it down globally through treaties like other tech that's too dangerous for anyone to have

palisade

I've been contemplating a decentralized model training system for some time using volunteer machines that we all contribute. But, it is astronomically difficult. The communication speeds are untenable. And, there is the issue of data poisoning from untrusted nodes. I've almost cracked that last issue with a self-healing checkpointed rollback system that doesn't have to throw out anything that follows the corrupt datum. But, I'm just one person with an idea and I don't have infinite funds to make this happen. This isn't a small project. Maybe there would be interest in something like this, now that entire frontier labs are being banned from making further progress. The total power of all GPUs on the planet dwarf their capabilities, if we had a way to harness them in a distributed way efficiently. We wouldn't be able to train a Fable as fast as them, but eventually having access is better than never having access.

RIshabh235

our dependency on US AI will lead to data concentration in hands of few megacorps.

aryasyn

Definitely, but I see the gap widening everyday, especially while commercial AI models have started converging towards AGI. However I do believe and support the cause, as it's the next big thing as developers we need to take to prevent a complete monopoly in the coming few years.

AlphaSite

I think models will be a commodity sooner rather than later. This whole race doesnt matter. First mover advantage is real, but over enough time it wont matter.

steren

Wasn't it the point of ... OpenAI?