Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AI weights are not open “source”

opencoreventures.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 274 posts

Re: AI weights are not open “source”

#21

Post by killjoywashere »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #9
meindnoch wrote: post #2

According to whom? Weights are a type of program, which are interpreted by the neural network runtime. Same as Java bytecode interpreted by the JVM runtime.

Weights are data, not a type of program. A computer program is a set of instructions that may be executed. Weights are values that may be loaded by a program, but are not a program in and of themselves.

But not "raw" data. They are derived from other data and a program. If this was a collaboration where one collaborator did the processing and one sourced the data, they would likely both claim some amount of ownership of the trained weights.

At a minimum, it would be an active area of negotiation that the attorneys would take notice of. Source: have negotiated these agreements.

Re: AI weights are not open “source”

#22

Post by programmarchy »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #9
meindnoch wrote: post #2

According to whom? Weights are a type of program, which are interpreted by the neural network runtime. Same as Java bytecode interpreted by the JVM runtime.

Weights are data, not a type of program. A computer program is a set of instructions that may be executed. Weights are values that may be loaded by a program, but are not a program in and of themselves.

This is a distinction without a difference. Code is data and data is code.

Re: AI weights are not open “source”

#24

Post by jkeisling »

The article makes a good point: we should prevent “open-washing” and draw a distinction between well-intentioned restrictive licenses like “Open”RAIL and true open source. However, I worry the name “ethical source” is itself a bit question-begging. While outfits like Bloom may believe in good-faith ethical principles, their definition of ethics isn’t necessarily everyone’s. If restricted models are “ethical”, is releasing open weights “unethical”? Conversely, is releasing a model with PII or artist styles in it “ethical” if a few known use cases are forbidden? There’s no one right answer. Labeling any one set of restrictions as “ethical” off the bat makes discussion harder and puts open source on the back foot to justify “not being ethical”. Better to just call them “restricted models” or “guarded models”, and leave it to individuals to decide if these restrictions are beneficial or not.

Re: AI weights are not open “source”

#26

Post by tiffanyg »

AI licensing is extremely complex. Unlike software licensing, AI isn’t as simple as applying current proprietary/open source software licenses. AI has multiple components—the source code, weights, data, etc.—that are licensed differently.

Are you joking? This isn't wrong, per se, but it's worded as though written by someone with only the most casual / cursory interaction and knowledge of this area of law / commerce (e.g., including licensing, copyright, trademark / service mark, patent, etc.) ... until perhaps quite recently.

Yes, the AREA IS complicated. No, so-called "AI" is not introducing all sorts of novel issues, structures, etc. "AI" has some nuances distinct from much of what has come before (happens basically every time more significant tech comes along) and some possibly more unique questions related to economics, ethics, philosophy, and the like, but the relevant areas of law and practice have often been complicated and sort of "bleeding edge", even going back before the industrial revolution.

Big money, powerful tech, large-scale economic forces, etc. = lots of maneuvering, legislation, litigation, etc. = complicated "rules of the game".

Drawing the distinction vs. software in general is reasonable - but, the rather click-baity headline and "I just learned about 'IP' law and bah gawd y'all are doin' it wrong" tone to the start of this article suggest, to me, that this isn't likely to be the best article to use as a reference to learn about these issues.

Re: AI weights are not open “source”

#27

Post by version_five »

bee_rider wrote: post #8

> The ethical license category applies to licenses that allow commercial use of the component but includes field of endeavor and/or behavioral use restrictions set by the licensor. I don’t love the name, “ethical license” sounds like a description of the license: this license is ethical. Really this sort of license imposes a particular ethical framework on the user. Not to throw shade, though. It is actually hard to…

Yes I was going to say the same thing. It's a branding that has been applied by the license's proponents, and I personally reject a lot of what they call "ethics" as well as the idea of whatever monitoring and enforcement the restrictions entail - maybe calling it a religious license would be better.

Re: AI weights are not open “source”

#28

Post by cpcallen »

I'm disappointed that the article is only making the (somewhat pedantic) distinction between source code and weights. From the quotation marks in the headline I hoped that it would instead be making the distinction between human-readable source code and machine-readable compiled form.

For example, IMHO (IANAL) an AI code-completion tool that had been trained on GPL software is (or should be) only be legal to distribute if it is accompanied by the training code _and all the code ingested during training_ (or an offer to provide such code upon request).

Re: AI weights are not open “source”

#29

Post by larodi »

tiffanyg wrote: post #26

AI licensing is extremely complex. Unlike software licensing, AI isn’t as simple as applying current proprietary/open source software licenses. AI has multiple components—the source code, weights, data, etc.—that are licensed differently. Are you joking? This isn't wrong , per se, but it's worded as though written by someone with only the most casual / cursory interaction and knowledge of this area of law / commerce…

I was like going to write ‘are u joking’, but you make the same point so well. This article is at best oversimplifying and misleading.

Besides I doubt this ‘my weights your weights’ thing is a thing at all.

Re: AI weights are not open “source”

#30

Post by earleybird »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #9
meindnoch wrote: post #2

According to whom? Weights are a type of program, which are interpreted by the neural network runtime. Same as Java bytecode interpreted by the JVM runtime.

Weights are data, not a type of program. A computer program is a set of instructions that may be executed. Weights are values that may be loaded by a program, but are not a program in and of themselves.

Weights are data in the same way that instruction codes in memory is data.
Post reply on HN