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GNU Gneural Network

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Re: GNU Gneural Network

#2

Post by fnfhdjcnx »

I'm glad the FSF is finally getting concerned about proprietary AI, but it's going to take a lot more than a single neural network package to get caught up in this arms race.

I wish they had taken the initiative much sooner.

Re: GNU Gneural Network

#3

Post by _delirium »

I agree with the general motivation that having too much AI research in the hands of software companies who keep it proprietary harms transparency and progress. But there is already a lot of neural-network free software, so why another package? For example, these widely used packages are free software, and seemingly more featureful: http://torch.ch/, http://www.deeplearning.net/software/theano/, http://pybrain.org/, https://www.tensorflow.org/, http://leenissen.dk/fann/wp/, http://chainer.org/

Re: GNU Gneural Network

#4

Post by iwwr »

fnfhdjcnx wrote: post #2

I'm glad the FSF is finally getting concerned about proprietary AI, but it's going to take a lot more than a single neural network package to get caught up in this arms race. I wish they had taken the initiative much sooner.

It's more that someone interested in neural networks also wanted to work under the Gnu umbrella. The FSF don't have any resources per se.

Re: GNU Gneural Network

#5

Post by simondedalus »

_delirium wrote: post #3

I agree with the general motivation that having too much AI research in the hands of software companies who keep it proprietary harms transparency and progress. But there is already a lot of neural-network free software, so why another package? For example, these widely used packages are free software, and seemingly more featureful: http://torch.ch/ , http://www.deeplearning.net/software/theano/ , http://pybrain.org/…

I think the idea is to use awareness of GNU and also to focus the attention of people with the skill to contribute on neural-networks.

What I mean is, you're right of course, there's much better neural-network free software already available, but GNU endorsing an official package 1) could get people whose concerns are more strongly geared toward free software ethics to start paying attention to neural networks, and 2) get people, regardless of their ideological commitment to anything, to be more aware both of the ethical issues and of neural-network software--just in virtue of GNU's mild fame.

and of course, unless the maintainer of this package makes weird choices and alienates other projects, there's the other benefit of projects learning from each other and poaching code and strategies for the greater good.

Re: GNU Gneural Network

#6

Post by semisight »

_delirium wrote: post #3

I agree with the general motivation that having too much AI research in the hands of software companies who keep it proprietary harms transparency and progress. But there is already a lot of neural-network free software, so why another package? For example, these widely used packages are free software, and seemingly more featureful: http://torch.ch/ , http://www.deeplearning.net/software/theano/ , http://pybrain.org/…

Almost all of the open source software in the area is permissive-licensed, and relies on non-free components (CUDA).

To be honest, I'm not sure how Gneural plans to compete with those packages without support from CUDA or cuDNN, all of which are distinctly not open source.

Re: GNU Gneural Network

#7

Post by latenightcoding »

Love it! If you want to play with state-of-the-art machine learning software, this is not for you. But if you want a clean implementation of neural networks in C that has a GPL license and no non-free components, this is a good start.

Re: GNU Gneural Network

#8

Post by spdustin »

semisight wrote: post #6
_delirium wrote: post #3

I agree with the general motivation that having too much AI research in the hands of software companies who keep it proprietary harms transparency and progress. But there is already a lot of neural-network free software, so why another package? For example, these widely used packages are free software, and seemingly more featureful: http://torch.ch/ , http://www.deeplearning.net/software/theano/ , http://pybrain.org/…

Almost all of the open source software in the area is permissive-licensed, and relies on non-free components (CUDA). To be honest, I'm not sure how Gneural plans to compete with those packages without support from CUDA or cuDNN, all of which are distinctly not open source.

I'd really like to understand the reasons behind the focus on CUDA and not OpenCL. My understanding is that nVidia and AMD made sure their hardware and software would make the GPU accessible for non-graphics tasks, but AMD's version is not functionally or legally locked to their hardware. Why hasn't OpenCL taken off and run on nVidia hardware?

It seems like there must be more at play, but I'll admit a lack of insight and imagination on this one.

Re: GNU Gneural Network

#9

Post by perfectfire »

latenightcoding wrote: post #7

Love it! If you want to play with state-of-the-art machine learning software, this is not for you. But if you want a clean implementation of neural networks in C that has a GPL license and no non-free components, this is a good start.

There's already FANN: which is more mature and has bindings for 28 other languages: http://leenissen.dk/fann/wp/language-bindings/ I maintain the C# wrapper.
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