The open-source AI boom is built on Big Tech’s handouts. How long will it last?
technologyreview.com
technologyreview.com
And open-source being built on Big Tech's research and models doesn't mean it relies on them. See: the many papers published by Standford and co. which rival OpenAI's research, RedPajama (https://www.together.xyz/blog/redpajama) which rivals LLaMa. And these are built with open alternatives, there'd be more motivation without.
Big Tech has the advantage of compute and resources, but it's probable that open-source has the advantage of research. Since companies may have a few very talented individuals, but open-source has way more people and includes academia.
Corporate AI is just 90% selling back public goods at a markup. They should be legally forced to open source.
They're fully welcome to keep proprietary the data that is already proprietary. But so far, that's not been their source.