White House says no need to restrict 'open-source' AI at least for now

[OldGreenYodaGPT]

Regulating open-source AI will only help giants like Google and OpenAI, stifling innovation. It creates barriers only they can afford, limiting competition and diversity. Open-source fosters transparency and rapid progress. We do not need government regulations, or we'll end up like Europe with China leading.

[GauntletWizard]

The problem is that the OSI's definition of "Open Source" AI doesn't match their definition of "Open Source" software, or really anything.

[talldayo]

> It creates barriers only they can afford, limiting competition and diversity.

I would argue this is inherent to the training and compute cost of all large language models.

[b112]

Comrade, open source is the wellspring of communism!

(As Microsoft explained years ago)

[splwjs]

that doesn't explain why the white house doesn't see the need to regulate it - if anything it gives them more reason to.

[laweijfmvo]

Would love to hear the White House explain to me what Open-Source AI is, in their own words.

[burkaman]

This sounds sarcastic, but as is often the case the White House has quite competent people working on this who have put a lot of thought into it already: https://www.ntia.gov/federal-register-notice/2024/dual-use-f...

Unfortunately it's past the deadline for you to add your own comments on this, but I'm sure there will be future RFCs if you have thoughts.

[talldayo]

Seems pretty clear to me they're using it colloquialism for freely distributed weights.

[sandworm101]

Better question: Is it possible to restrict open source AI?

If it is open then everyone has access. Any restrictions would be akin to demanding that linux not use strong encryption or firefox implement content censorship.

[grumpyinfosec]

Its possible to restrict DIY building of pretty much anything if your end goal was to stop people from doing something outside of their basement with it. I can't build my own open source coal fired power plant and except to sell power without the EPA coming to kill me. Same would be if i used a open source AI that violated some new consumer protection / anti fraud law if i choose to use it over the public internet / build it into a product. Hell you could probably go after the devs for being accessory if you really wanted to.

The license really does nothing to protect your project from regulation its just that the government doesn't care about open source yet.

[michaelt]

It hasn't proven possible yet but who knows what will be developed the future?

A lot of open source efforts depend on big companies training million-dollar models and giving them away. These companies will often apply some censoring adjustment to the weights, which the open source community then undoes through fine tuning.

But perhaps in the future new methods of censorship will be developed, which are radically harder to undo?

And of course, there's always heavy-handed options available - if we can require hairdressers to hold professional licenses, we could require the same of anyone who wants to upload to huggingface or civitai.

[Legend2440]

Until 1996 they did put restrictions on strong encryption, and everyone had to implement weak 40-bit encryption.

[p0w3n3d]

Intel Management Engine bug to find those computers which are using the free model?

[rvnx]

Might change after getting lobbying checks from Google, Microsoft and Apple.

[talldayo]

Why? All three of those companies have an obvious and outspoken commitment to releasing models for free, they aren't trying to manipulate fear to sell a product like OpenAI.

[ChrisArchitect]

Source: https://apnews.com/article/ai-open-source-white-house-f62009...

[bananapub]

fascinating how successful the bullshit rebranding of "sometimes we upload a TB file of weights" as "open source" has gone for them politically. I can't really imagine they thought it would go this well. will be interesting to see how this unexpected boon of a loophole will change their strategy, particularly """OpenAI""", who didn't think to do give themselves enough cover.

[_fat_santa]

Say the government actually wanted to regulate open source AI, how exactly would they do that?

If the govt wants to regulate commercial AI, they can do that by going to the companies responsible for building that AI and say "do X, Y and Z or else we will punish you with A, B or C". But what do you say to a collective of developers that could be all around the globe? What stops that group from just saying "F* You" and continuing on?

[war321]

Ya love to see it.

[stonethrowaway]

See my comment here on FBs strategic positioning: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41090142

Updated link.

[MP_1729]

Good. Effective Austruism is trying to destroy democratic institutions and it's likely a bigger threat to society than fascism. The pro-progress people needs to organize themselves to stop types like SBF from giving AI to China.

[didntcheck]

Can you elaborate on what you're referring to?