Supporting Open Source and Open Science in the EU AI Act | Open Future

by Paul Keller

Today — together with Hugging Face, Eleuther.ai, LAION, GitHub, and Creative Commons, we publish a statement on Supporting Open Source and Open Science in the EU AI Act. This statement was prompted by the European Parliament’s report on the AI Act and, specifically, the inclusion of rules that provide safeguards for the use of so-called foundation models (see our previous analysis here). These rules will form the basis for discussion in the trilogue negotiations in the fall of this year. In this statement, we propose an approach that balances the need for safeguards with the value of open source development of AI systems as input for the trilogue negotiations.

While the rules for foundation models (including generative ML models) are very welcome, the organizations that drafted the statement share a common concern that, as currently envisioned, they will impose restrictions on open source development of AI/ML systems. As such, they will put open source developers at a structural disadvantage compared to the large technology companies, with their  largely closed approaches to development.

In the statement, we propose a proportionate approach to regulating foundation models that builds on the Parliament’s proposal but makes certain requirements conditional on the commercial use of such models. While the statement also calls for expanding the research exemption to allow limited real-world testing, it explicitly does not propose a full-fledged exemption for open source foundation models.

As part of the statement, we provide a comprehensive overview of the open ecosystem of AI development, highlighting the importance of open development practices for democratic control and supporting open and transparent scientific research practices in this rapidly evolving field. We argue that broad access to functional AI systems and open general-purpose models is both a necessary and a valuable part of open and accountable AI development. Openness is, therefore, an essential element for ensuring that European values will be upheld in this area of technological development.

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