The Biden administration is wading into a contentious debate about whether the most powerful artificial intelligence systems should be 鈥渙pen-source鈥 or closed.
The White House said Wednesday it is seeking public comment on the risks and benefits of having an AI system's key components publicly available for anyone to use and modify. The inquiry is one piece of the broader that President Joe Biden signed in October to manage the fast-evolving technology.
Tech companies are divided on how open they make their AI models, with some emphasizing the dangers of widely accessible AI model components and others stressing that open science is important for researchers and startups. Among the most vocal promoters of an open approach have been Facebook parent Meta Platforms and IBM.
Biden鈥檚 order described open models with the technical name of 鈥渄ual-use foundation models with widely available weights鈥 and said they needed further study. Weights are numerical values that influence how an AI model performs.
When those weights are publicly posted on the internet, 鈥渢here can be substantial benefits to innovation, but also substantial security risks, such as the removal of safeguards within the model,鈥 Biden鈥檚 order said. He gave Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo until July to talk to experts and come back with recommendations on how to manage the potential benefits and risks.
Now the Commerce Department's 好色tv Telecommunications and Information Administration says it is also opening a 30-day comment period to field ideas that will be included in a report to the president.
鈥淥ne piece of encouraging news is that it鈥檚 clear to the experts that this is not a binary issue. There are gradients of openness,鈥 said Alan Davidson, an assistant Commerce secretary and the NTIA's administrator. Davidson told reporters Tuesday that it's possible to find solutions that promote both innovation and safety.
Meta plans to share with the Biden administration "what we鈥檝e learned from building AI technologies in an open way over the last decade so that the benefits of AI can continue to be shared by everyone,鈥 according to a written statement from Nick Clegg, the company's president of global affairs.
Google has largely favored a more closed approach but on Wednesday released a new group of open models, called Gemma, that derive from the same technology used to create its recently released Gemini . Google describes the open models as a more 鈥渓ightweight鈥 version of its larger and more powerful Gemini, which remains closed.
In a Wednesday, Google said it has prioritized safety because of the 鈥渋rreversible nature鈥 of releasing an open model such as Gemma and urged 鈥渢he wider AI community to move beyond simplistic 鈥檕pen vs. closed鈥 debates, and avoid either exaggerating or minimising potential harms, as we believe a nuanced, collaborative approach to risks and benefits is essential.鈥
