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Comment by smolder | Hacker News Reader

> For that same reason, we won't see open source models by this definition any time soon

It's totally fine if we don't have many (or any) models meeting the definition of open source! How hard is it to use a different term that actually applies?

The people on my side of the argument seem to be saying: "do not misapply these words", not "do not give away your weights".

Insisting on calling a model with undisclosed sources "open source" has what benefit? Marketing? That's really all I can think of... that it's to satisfy the goals of propagandists.

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It's not just marketing: European AI Act impose several compliance obligations to corporations building AI system, including serious scientific scrutiny on the whole training process.

Such obligations are designed to mitigate the inherent risks that AI can pose to individuals and society.

The AI Act exempts open source from such scientific scrutiny because it's already transparent.

BUT if OSI defines black boxes as "open source", they open a loophole that will be exploited to harm people without being held accountable.

So it's not just marketing, but dangerous corporate capture.

Exactly. Without models being truly open source, (training data, training procedures, alignment etc.), there is no way for auditors to assess, for example, whether a model was trained on data exhibiting certain forms of selection bias (anything from training data or alignment being overly biased towards Western culture, controversial political or moral viewpoints, particular religions, gender stereotypes, even racism) which might lead to dangerous outcomes later on, whether by contamination of derived models or during inference.

> if OSI defines black boxes as "open source", they open a loophole that will be exploited to harm people without being held accountable

The OSI’s definition matches the legal definition in the EU and California (and common use). If the OSI says open data only, it will just be ignored. (If people are upset about the current use, they can make the free vs. open distinction we do in software to keep the pedantic definition contained.)

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