> Is your evidence for this anything other than anecdotal?
And what is the evidence for closed source being the safest option in AI?
> Namely, the fear is that we'll get an AI which is much more intelligent than us
Which is probably quite some time away, given the fact that LLMs and other generative models have neither intentionality, nor agency. So right now, and probably for a long time to come, we are not talking about existential threats in the form of Skynet.
But we ARE talking about a revolutionary technology, that will change the economic landscape for potentially hundreds of millions of people. I am pretty convinced that a majority of them will not be comfortable with decisions about these technologies being made behind closed (corporate) doors.
We are also talking about the much more immediate dangers of AI, which don't arise from super intelligent machines, but from how humans use them, how they are trained, on what, and for what purposes they are used and by whom. These as well are issues that society will want to have more eyeballs on, not less.
Other than concerns that someday an AGI might endanger humanity, both of these issues are here, right now, and we have to deal with that fact.