False perceptions
On the coronary heart of open-washing is a distortion of the ideas of openness, transparency, and reusability. Transparency in AI would entail publicly documenting how fashions are developed, skilled, fine-tuned, and deployed. This would come with full entry to the information units, weights, architectures, and decision-making processes concerned within the fashions’ building. Most AI corporations fall wanting this stage of transparency. By selectively releasing elements of their fashions—typically stripped of key particulars—they craft an phantasm of openness.
Reusability, one other pillar of openness, is way the identical. Firms enable entry to their fashions through APIs or light-weight downloadable variations however forestall significant adaptation by tying utilization to proprietary ecosystems. This partial launch affords a calculated stage of reusability that maximizes huge cloud’s worth extraction whereas minimizing the chance of rivals.
For instance, OpenAI’s GPT fashions are accessible, however their integrations are invariably tied to particular net shoppers, upkeep libraries, and functions owned by the corporate. Enterprise builders don’t obtain free rein to regulate, adapt, or redistribute these fashions, which runs afoul of licensing agreements. One developer buddy of mine put it greatest when he stated, “These items is about as open as a financial institution vault.”
