Silicon Valley has been embroiled in a pitched battle over how artificial intelligence software should be created. Some have said A.I. models should be “closed” because they are too powerful and dangerous to be developed openly. Others have said A.I. models must be “open source” for people to further develop the technologies and build new businesses.
Amid the debate, technologists have battled over how much openness is enough, citing “open weights.” What are open weights? We’ll explain them.
First, what is open-source software?
When software developers decide to make their technology open source, they publish all of the underlying computer code. They also release the code under an “open license,” which lets other developers use it without paying fees or royalties.
There are several advantages to making code publicly available.
One is security. Private code can be reviewed by a company’s employees for flaws, but public code can be reviewed by everyone so that many more technologists weed out mistakes that could lead to cybersecurity incidents.
Another is faster innovation. Many companies have leaned into open-source software to bootstrap new products more quickly, instead of writing code from scratch. Today, open-source software undergirds much of the modern internet.
What are ‘open weights’ in A.I.?
A.I. models learn their skills by pinpointing patterns in vast amounts of digital data. By finding patterns in books, news articles and other online documents, an A.I. model can learn to generate English on its own. The model stores these patterns as numerical calculations called “weights.” These values determine how an A.I. model “thinks” as it responds to prompts from users.
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