AI_dev Europe 2024

When it comes to artificial intelligence, people tend to fall into one of two camps: that of unbridled excitement or that of doom and gloom. It is a divisive topic, made all the more so by the many layers of indirection involved in building machine learning technologies. On the one hand, we all interact with machine learning every day in generally positive ways. On the other hand, we have also seen how easy it is for intelligent agents to Go Wrong™. But what if we had full transparency into machine learning? What if we had the same capabilities with machine learning systems as we have come to expect with open source software– the ability to study them, ascertain provenance, understand (and participate in!) the design process, and raise visibility of deficits? The effect of such systems could go far beyond democratizing machine learning and creating better intelligent systems. Let's take an optimistic look at some of the possible unexpected societal benefits that could result from truly open source AI.