4 ms·
> open source weights but the corpus is secret This is oxymoronic; the corpus is the "source". Yet this usage of "open source" is widespread. Maybe we should s
by dTal 2y ago
> open source weights but the corpus is secret
This is oxymoronic; the corpus is the "source". Yet this usage of "open source" is widespread. Maybe we should start calling such models by their rightful name, "freeware".
- inbetween 2y agoFreeware versus open source is a good point. But freeware typically can't be modified by the recipient, whereas downloadable models and open source code can. So I think there's still a need for a different term, neither open source nor freeware...
- dTal 2y agoI would argue that the kind of modification you can do to a big blob of weights is more akin to fiddling with a binary in a hex editor than modifying source code. It is not the "preferred form" for the source, and you cannot cleanly and easily do things like modify its "alignment" - that is why people speak of "jailbreaking" these models. So I still think "freeware" works as a term.
- sdenton4 2y agoNo, the corpus is not the source. It's data. So we can have concepts of open models, open source, and open data. Any combination of these can be chosen independently. (Open data and open model but not open source is a bit weird, but not unthinkable: there may be unreleased training tricks or specialized infrastructure such that the source code release is hard or undesirable.)