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Open source AI must win

opensourceaimustwin.com

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Re: Open source AI must win

#161

Post by cortesoft »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #27
CharlesW wrote: post #19

Can we assume that the author isn't using "Opensource" to mean "Openweights"? Or are we still collectively brainwashed by the strategic false equivalence established by Big AI CMOs?

On this very thread you already have people talking about "open weights" and similar nonsense. What is open about them? They're free to download, but that hardly qualifies as open. Where is the source? Where are the instructions to modify and build your own? I'd never though I'd have to utter the expression "open as in beer". The blatant attempt at manipulating vocabulary here is... quite blatant.

What would the 'source' be for an LLM? There is the structure, and the weights, there is no 'source'.

Re: Open source AI must win

#162

Post by bluejay2387 »

In the US -- once our nation finishes attacking our own education system -- this is definitely something a group of academic institutions could get together and accomplish. I assume the same is true in other countries. Companies like Nvidia and AMD might even support that effort, as they make money on the hardware and would probably be more than happy for there to be more reasons to use it. There may have not been a compelling enough motivation to achieve this before, but "models" didn't have this level of strategic relevance until relatively recently. Nvidia has been fairly good about releasing open weight models in the last few months.

Re: Open source AI must win

#163

Post by digitaltrees »

kdheiwns wrote: post #125
bot403 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, or perhaps not too far off it's like opting out of electricity, or the automobile. Sure you can. But you're going to have a bad time.

And then the Amish see the world around them using electricity and cars and think, "Yep, I'm happier without that." And they're one of the few groups on earth with a growing population, so they're doing something right.

1. Your assumption that a growing population is the metric of success is questionable. A population that grows but is subject to famine, epidemics, and natural disasters because they haven’t developed the scientific and technological capacity to escape the existential risks of the physical world is living on borrowed time. Not saying I agree with that, and I would actually agree that there is merit to the Amish hypothesis that a certain existence is more compatible with individual and societal fulfillment. But there are obvious counterpoints.

2. The Amish are not a good example because AI will confer an advantage to those that control access to it that has never existed.

Re: Open source AI must win

#164

Post by oneneptune »

overgard wrote: post #150
gslepak wrote: post #23

Where does Anthropic or OpenAI winning leave us? Dependents of an AI-megacorp for our "facts"? Our software? Our work? It's possible these companies will become everyone's boss, and will dictate to everyone what everyone is allowed to work on, think, say, do, believe, etc. Before Big Tech springs that trap, we must support and divert resources to open models.

I don't think we're going to be "dependent", because I can't really think of anyone that "needs" this stuff (well, unless you're like attempting to build a business off skills you don't have). I guess this really comes down to if you believe the productivity story. I don't. I think there are some gains, but the evidence that isn't just anecdotes from vibe coders seems to be modest.

... and building a business off of skills you don't have based on a strategy already exists! You use capital to pay humans that do have the skills.

Or capital a comparable sum to pay an AI to approximate the skills of humans I guess is the proposed future?

Re: Open source AI must win

#165

Post by steelframe »

hecanjog wrote: post #98
gslepak wrote: post #23

Where does Anthropic or OpenAI winning leave us? Dependents of an AI-megacorp for our "facts"? Our software? Our work? It's possible these companies will become everyone's boss, and will dictate to everyone what everyone is allowed to work on, think, say, do, believe, etc. Before Big Tech springs that trap, we must support and divert resources to open models.

Or just opt out... you don't have to use these things.

I can't even manually resolve the merge conflicts alone that happen between my code and that of everyone else submitting code at agent speed in my team's repo. So long as I have financial obligations toward my family, I cannot opt out. I must use these things.

Re: Open source AI must win

#166

Post by mhog_hn »

At d5s.tech we are recreating the layers built on top of models, working on dogfooding our own product to run a large chunk of the company.

I feel extremely strongly that a future in which most companies depend on one or two large AI-megacorps is going to lead to excessive rent seeking sooner or later.

I remain positive that the long term steady state will consist of proprietary models, -but- with open source AI models statistically close.

If compute keeps growing the relative cost of training current frontier models will decrease. An open source Fable/Mythos model simply seems inevitable.

Re: Open source AI must win

#167

Post by sandcat_ »

gslepak wrote: post #23

Where does Anthropic or OpenAI winning leave us? Dependents of an AI-megacorp for our "facts"? Our software? Our work? It's possible these companies will become everyone's boss, and will dictate to everyone what everyone is allowed to work on, think, say, do, believe, etc. Before Big Tech springs that trap, we must support and divert resources to open models.

Eh, they’ll learn soon enough there’s a limit to their power, unless they somehow start acquiring munitions. There’s a reason the electricity companies and other utilities didn’t take over the economy, despite now being essential.

Re: Open source AI must win

#168

Post by hirako2000 »

george_max wrote: post #2

With open-weight AI, there might not be an incentive to put large sums of capital towards training / research. There might be a donation fund of some sorts, but it certainly won't reach the level of fundraising that the frontier labs are receiving. Because of this, I think it might not be possible to have AI *only* open-weight; major players like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google will likely stay for good, with better models…

Zoom out. It's a matter of time the trillion valuations will be deemed senseless, only once it will prove inpossible to extract trillions from consumers.

In the meanwhile, and regardless, software optimisations coupled with hardware continuing to scale, we will end up, soon enough, with some open weight that run on a mobile device with greater capabilities than Fable.

Re: Open source AI must win

#169

Post by palisade »

ai_fry_ur_brain wrote: post #74
palisade wrote: post #44

I've been contemplating a decentralized model training system for some time using volunteer machines that we all contribute. But, it is astronomically difficult. The communication speeds are untenable. And, there is the issue of data poisoning from untrusted nodes. I've almost cracked that last issue with a self-healing checkpointed rollback system that doesn't have to throw out anything that follows the corrupt datu…

[flagged]

Someone with AI psychosis would say it was easy. I'm saying the opposite. I'm stating that it'd be cool, but at the moment I don't see how it is feasible. And, for fun I tried to solve one small aspect of the problem.

I also didn't bring up the concept out of nowhere, this is in response to an article about open source AI. The premise of the post is releasing control to the public. What is more open than a decentralized system? And, why wouldn't you brainstorm in a comment on such a thread?

I also didn't ask an AI for the idea, it's just an idea I have. There's a difference.

Re: Open source AI must win

#170

Post by jongjong »

cortesoft wrote: post #156
jongjong wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source models don't need to be anywhere near as good as Claude Mythos or even Claude Sonnet to 'win'. Open source 'winning' just means that there exists at least one open source alternative to closed models which is as good as, say, GPT 4... I mean, we're essentially there already with Google Gemma models. As a software engineer, I didn't notice any difference in my productivity since Sonnet. Of course Opus is b…

> Open source 'winning' just means that there exists at least one open source alternative to closed models which is as good as, say, GPT 4... I mean, we're essentially there already with Google Gemma models. Is this really true? We just don't know what the maximum capability of AI is. If it turns out AI can be as intelligent and capable as something like Data from Star Trek, no one is going to be thinking GPT 4 is go…

It could get really smart but I'm confident in my thesis that surplus intelligence beyond a certain level doesn't yield any real economic benefits.

At scale, I can see a benefit in terms of being able to process large amounts of data intelligently to gain a competitive advantage in terms of accruing nominal gains but I think that as long as AI is pursuing dollars, those gains won't translate to real value to the people who control the AI. At best, will translate to more political control; but with added risks and threats too. I suspect it will look more like controlled decline with a small number of entities getting an increasingly large slice of a rapidly shrinking pie.

I think AI may just figure out really complex ways to legally steal people's money. It will probably look all legit on the surface, it will look like the majority of people are just freakishly unlucky and a tiny number of elites are just extremely lucky... But it will be AI behind the scenes orchestrating seemingly random events; choosing who gets lucky and who doesn't.

Might end up literally like a game of monopoly. One player could dominate the game and start receiving all the money but, if you look at the big picture, none of the players are doing anything economically useful; just sitting around a board and moving pieces of paper amongst each other.

It's like the industrial revolution. Many kings and emperors did not like the idea of industrialization because they were already living a luxurious life and understood that it would not benefit them and would only create risks and problems for them personally. They could already afford as many human servants than they needed, what was the point of replacing them with machines to provide the same service they already received? It would give their servants more free time? To an emperor, that would have sounded more like a problem than a solution. It's a bit like that with AI. The people who control AI won't benefit from it beyond what they already have. If it doesn't serve a social cause then it serves nobody.

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