31 ms·

Does "open-source" even make sense as a category for AI models? There isn't really a source code in the traditional sense.

• mistrial9 2y ago
  I have heard government people talk about "the data is open-source" meaning it has public, no cost copy points to get data files e.g. csv or other.
• paulddraper 2y ago
  Yeah, it's like an open-source jacket. I don't really know what you're referring to....
  • echoangle 2y ago
    An Open Source jacket actually makes more sense to me than an open source LLM. I generally understand hardware to be open source when all design files are available (for example CAD models of a case and KiCad files for a PCB). If the patterns of a jacket were available in an editable standard-format file, you could argue that’s an open source jacket.
• Barrin92 2y ago
  I had the same thought. "Source Code" is a human readable and modifiable set of instructions that describe the execution of a program. There's obviously parts of an AI system that include literal code, usually a bunch of python scripts or whatever, to interact and build the thing, but most of it is on the one hand data, and on the other an artifact, the AI model and neither is source code really. If you want to talk about the openness and accessibility of these systems I'd just ditch the "source" part and create some new criteria for what makes an AI model open.
• atq2119 2y ago
  There's code for training and inference that could be open-source. For the weights, I agree that open-source doesn't make sense as a category. They're really a kind of database. Perhaps a better way to think about it is in terms of "commons". Consider how creative commons licenses are explicit about requirements like attribution, noncommercial, share-alike, etc.; that feels like a useful model for talking about weights.