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> Encourage Open-Source and Open-Weight AI It's good to see this, especially since they acknowledge that open weights is not equal to open source.

cardamomo 1y ago
I wonder how this intersects with their interest in "unbiased" models. Scare quotes because their concept of unbiased is scary.
- rayval 1y ago
  "unbiased", in the world of realpolitik, means "biased in a manner to further my agenda and not yours".
  - HPsquared 1y ago
    See also "fair".
- rtkwe 1y ago
  Elon gives an unvarnished look at what they mean by 'unbiased' with respect to models. It's rewriting the training material or adding tool use (searching for Musk's tweets about topics before deciding it's output) to twist the output into ideological alignment.
ActorNightly 1y ago
Its all meaningless though.
bigyabai 1y ago
Good to see what? "Encourage" means nothing, every example listed in the document is more exploitative than supportive. Today, Google and Apple both already sell AI products that technically fall under this definition, and did without government "encouragement" in the mix. There isn't a single actionable thing mentioned that would promote further development of such models.
- artninja1988 1y ago
  It's certainly more encouraging than the tone from a few months/ years ago, when there was talk of outright banning open source/ weigh foundational weight models
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    You literally cannot ban weights. You can try, but you can't. Anyone threatening to do so wasn't doing it credibly.
jonplackett 1y ago
How can this work with their main goal of assuring American superiority? If it’s open weights anyone else can use it too.
- nicce 1y ago
  Can a model make so sophisticated propaganda or manipulation that most won’t notice it?
  - ChrisRR 1y ago
    Well just look at the existing propaganda machines online and how annoyingly effective they are
    - WHA8m 1y ago
      Be specific. "Well just look at <general direction>" is a horrible way of discussing. And about your thought: I disagree. When I look at those online places, I see echo chambers, trolls and a lack of critical thinking (on how to properly discuss a topic). Some parts might be artificially accelerated, but I don't see propaganda couldn't be fought. People are just coasting, lazy, group thinking, being entertained and angry.
      - ted_dunning 1y ago
        Lack of critical thinking is a key success indicator for propaganda. Propaganda is less about what it says, but more about how it makes people _feel_. If you get the feels strong enough, it doesn't matter what you say. The game is over before you start.
  - pydry 1y ago
    Most western news propaganda isnt especially sophisticated and even the internally inconsistent narratives it pushes still end up finding an echo on hacker news.
- sunaookami 1y ago
belter 1y ago
Only weights that are not Woke according to what was stated. And reduce those weights on the neural net path to the Epstein files please.
rs186 1y ago
Without providing actual support like money, the government saying they encourage open-* AI is no more meaningful than me saying the same thing. In fact, if you open the PDF file and navigate to that section, the content is barely relevant at all.
- throw14082020 1y ago
  Even if they did provide more money, it doesn't mean it'll go to the right place. Government money is not the solution here. Money is already being spent.
- SkyMarshal 1y ago
  We're clearly in an era where the US Govt simply doesn't have enough money to throw at everything it wants to encourage, and needs to develop alternate means of incentivizing (or de-disincentivizing) those things. Sensible minimal regulation is one, there may be others. Time to get creative and resourceful.
  - AvAn12 1y ago
    The budget is the policy, stripped of rhetoric. What any government spends money on IS a full and complete expression of its priorities. The rest is circus. What increased and decreased in the most recent budget bill? That is the full and complete story. If no $$ for open source or open weight model development, then that is not a policy priority, despite any nice words to the contrary.
  - berbec 1y ago
    The US has been continuously running a budget deficit for decades (brief blip at the end of Clinton/beginning of W Bush). This is more of an "epoch" than "era". I love the idea of incentives that aren't tax breaks!
  - mdhb 1y ago
    It’s genuinely bizarre to read a comment like this which seems to imply there is some kind of grand strategy behind this when the reality is and always has been “own the libs”. They very clearly have no idea what the fuck they are doing they just know what other people say they should do and their toddler reaction is to do the opposite.
hopelite 1y ago
It’s primarily motivated by control; similar to how all narcissistic, abusive, controlling, murderous, “dominating” (as the document itself proclaims) people and systems are. That is not motivated by magnanimity and genuine shared interest or focus on precision and accuracy. The controllers of the whole system want open weights and source to make sure models aren’t going to expose the population to unapproved ideas and allow the spread of unapproved thoughts or allow making unapproved connections or ask unapproved questions without them being suitably countered to keep everyone in line with the system.
jsnider3 1y ago
No, it's bad, since we will soon reach a point where AI models are major security risks and we can't get rid of an AI after we open-source it.
- rwmj 1y ago
  "major security risks" as in Terminator style robot overlords, or (to me more likely) they enable people to develop exploits more easily? Anyway I fail to see how it makes much difference if the models are open or closed, since the barrier to entry to creating new models is not that large (as in, any competent large company or nation state can do it easily), and even if they were all closed source, anyone who has the weights can run up as many copies as they want.
  - shortrounddev2 1y ago
    The risk of AI is that they are used for industrial scale misinformation
    - rwmj 1y ago
      Definitely a risk, and already happening, but I presume mostly closed source AIs are used for this? Like, people using the ChatGPT APIs to generate spam; or Grok just doing its normal thing. Don't see how the open vs closed debate has much to do with it.
      - patcon 1y ago
        You can't see how a hosted private model (that can monitor usage and adapt mechanisms to that) has a different risk profile than an open weight model (that is unmonitorable and becomes more and more runnable on more and more hardware every month)? One can become more controlled and wrangle in the edge-cases, and the other has exploding edges. You can have your politics around the value of open source models, but I find it hard to argue that there aren't MUCH higher risks with the lack of containment of open weights models

cardamomo 1y ago

I wonder how this intersects with their interest in "unbiased" models. Scare quotes because their concept of unbiased is scary.

rayval 1y ago
"unbiased", in the world of realpolitik, means "biased in a manner to further my agenda and not yours".
- HPsquared 1y ago
  See also "fair".
rtkwe 1y ago
Elon gives an unvarnished look at what they mean by 'unbiased' with respect to models. It's rewriting the training material or adding tool use (searching for Musk's tweets about topics before deciding it's output) to twist the output into ideological alignment.

ActorNightly 1y ago

Its all meaningless though.

bigyabai 1y ago

Good to see what? "Encourage" means nothing, every example listed in the document is more exploitative than supportive. Today, Google and Apple both already sell AI products that technically fall under this definition, and did without government "encouragement" in the mix. There isn't a single actionable thing mentioned that would promote further development of such models.

artninja1988 1y ago
It's certainly more encouraging than the tone from a few months/ years ago, when there was talk of outright banning open source/ weigh foundational weight models
- bigyabai 1y ago
  You literally cannot ban weights. You can try, but you can't. Anyone threatening to do so wasn't doing it credibly.

jonplackett 1y ago

How can this work with their main goal of assuring American superiority? If it’s open weights anyone else can use it too.

nicce 1y ago
Can a model make so sophisticated propaganda or manipulation that most won’t notice it?
- ChrisRR 1y ago
  Well just look at the existing propaganda machines online and how annoyingly effective they are
  - WHA8m 1y ago
    Be specific. "Well just look at <general direction>" is a horrible way of discussing. And about your thought: I disagree. When I look at those online places, I see echo chambers, trolls and a lack of critical thinking (on how to properly discuss a topic). Some parts might be artificially accelerated, but I don't see propaganda couldn't be fought. People are just coasting, lazy, group thinking, being entertained and angry.
    - ted_dunning 1y ago
      Lack of critical thinking is a key success indicator for propaganda. Propaganda is less about what it says, but more about how it makes people _feel_. If you get the feels strong enough, it doesn't matter what you say. The game is over before you start.
- pydry 1y ago
  Most western news propaganda isnt especially sophisticated and even the internally inconsistent narratives it pushes still end up finding an echo on hacker news.
sunaookami 1y ago

belter 1y ago

Only weights that are not Woke according to what was stated. And reduce those weights on the neural net path to the Epstein files please.

rs186 1y ago

Without providing actual support like money, the government saying they encourage open-* AI is no more meaningful than me saying the same thing. In fact, if you open the PDF file and navigate to that section, the content is barely relevant at all.

throw14082020 1y ago
Even if they did provide more money, it doesn't mean it'll go to the right place. Government money is not the solution here. Money is already being spent.
SkyMarshal 1y ago
We're clearly in an era where the US Govt simply doesn't have enough money to throw at everything it wants to encourage, and needs to develop alternate means of incentivizing (or de-disincentivizing) those things. Sensible minimal regulation is one, there may be others. Time to get creative and resourceful.
- AvAn12 1y ago
  The budget is the policy, stripped of rhetoric. What any government spends money on IS a full and complete expression of its priorities. The rest is circus. What increased and decreased in the most recent budget bill? That is the full and complete story. If no $$ for open source or open weight model development, then that is not a policy priority, despite any nice words to the contrary.
- berbec 1y ago
  The US has been continuously running a budget deficit for decades (brief blip at the end of Clinton/beginning of W Bush). This is more of an "epoch" than "era". I love the idea of incentives that aren't tax breaks!
- mdhb 1y ago
  It’s genuinely bizarre to read a comment like this which seems to imply there is some kind of grand strategy behind this when the reality is and always has been “own the libs”. They very clearly have no idea what the fuck they are doing they just know what other people say they should do and their toddler reaction is to do the opposite.

hopelite 1y ago

It’s primarily motivated by control; similar to how all narcissistic, abusive, controlling, murderous, “dominating” (as the document itself proclaims) people and systems are. That is not motivated by magnanimity and genuine shared interest or focus on precision and accuracy. The controllers of the whole system want open weights and source to make sure models aren’t going to expose the population to unapproved ideas and allow the spread of unapproved thoughts or allow making unapproved connections or ask unapproved questions without them being suitably countered to keep everyone in line with the system.

jsnider3 1y ago

No, it's bad, since we will soon reach a point where AI models are major security risks and we can't get rid of an AI after we open-source it.

rwmj 1y ago
"major security risks" as in Terminator style robot overlords, or (to me more likely) they enable people to develop exploits more easily? Anyway I fail to see how it makes much difference if the models are open or closed, since the barrier to entry to creating new models is not that large (as in, any competent large company or nation state can do it easily), and even if they were all closed source, anyone who has the weights can run up as many copies as they want.
- shortrounddev2 1y ago
  The risk of AI is that they are used for industrial scale misinformation
  - rwmj 1y ago
    Definitely a risk, and already happening, but I presume mostly closed source AIs are used for this? Like, people using the ChatGPT APIs to generate spam; or Grok just doing its normal thing. Don't see how the open vs closed debate has much to do with it.
    - patcon 1y ago
      You can't see how a hosted private model (that can monitor usage and adapt mechanisms to that) has a different risk profile than an open weight model (that is unmonitorable and becomes more and more runnable on more and more hardware every month)? One can become more controlled and wrangle in the edge-cases, and the other has exploding edges. You can have your politics around the value of open source models, but I find it hard to argue that there aren't MUCH higher risks with the lack of containment of open weights models