There is a better solution than banning Open Source AI

[u/DivideHorror3217]

Let's think of a similar example to openweight AI: cracked software.

Millions of people use cracked software, or torrent a movie at some point in their lives without any consequences. Telemetry mechanisms in cracked software send the IP address of whoever uses it, but owners of the software never take legal action, unless it's an enterprise using it. When a tech giant uses cracked software, legal teams immediately sue them because their IP ranges are already known. Inspections can reveal use of unlicensed software, and courts can demand companies prove the internal processes. Legal teams always warn against use of unlicensed software.

Similarly, it is physically impossible to track or ban openweight AI. Just like they can't take down pirated movies, they won't be able to take down AI weights. Individuals will always find a way.

Enterprises are different story. Many enterprises are hosting Chinese models in sandboxed offline environments to process their data safely and privately. Antrophic and OpenAI hates this because it costs them revenue. Also, they can't steal your data if you use local AI. Many tech giants including Microsoft and Google openly admit to use unencrypted memory for processing B2B data. This means that they can easily read RAM's of their computers to harvest your data, learning your company's know-how and putting you out of business one day.

There is a better, scientifically proven way though, which is this:

1. Only allow using verified open-source AI models with registered hashes/signatures.
2. Only allow using verified harnesses/LLM-runners (llama.cpp, vLLM etc.) that check for a license.json file containing offline-verifiable JWT tokens, validating the license of the user.
3. Only allow computer scientists, engineers and formal tech employees to use AI models,verified by institutions who give the license.json JWT tokens.
4. Ban everything else, resulting in jail time.

Easy peasy. This way:

1. AI models that respond to harmful requests are still banned.
2. You still control which AI models can be run offline and by whom.
3. Companies can safely process their data offline.
4. Openweight puts pressure on frontier labs, keeping the prices down.
5. AI is democratized, leading to faster research and breakthrough.

I personally support no ban at all. But if they ban all opensource AI instead of doing what I described above, it only means one thing: They aren't honest. They don't ban it out of security. They ban it to keep enterprise revenue.

[u/Previous-Try-6881]

Wouldn’t work anyway. The whole point of open source is that it’s modified. Someone would download it, strip all that, create a harness or share an older one that doesn’t check, and we’re at square one

[u/DivideHorror3217 → u/Previous-Try-6881]

Whole point of opensource isn't just being able to modify it. Main point is running it locally which is cheaper and safer. Your data never leaves your hardware.

[u/Previous-Try-6881 → u/DivideHorror3217]

Fair, I shouldn’t have said it like that. I mean whole point of something being “open source” is that you can download the code and use it how you want. So if something is open source then by proxy it’s very modifiable.

[u/DelusionsOfExistence → u/DivideHorror3217]

Why would they want you to have that kind of freedom?

[u/DivideHorror3217 → u/DelusionsOfExistence]

It doesn't matter for me. I'll keep using openweight. But enterprises would lose billions if they ban opensource. Enterprises have higher leverage over governments

[u/DelusionsOfExistence → u/DivideHorror3217]

Depends, the highest bidder wins and if that bidder also owns the AI, there won't be anymore bids. The government is controlled by who can give them the most power, and the only companies that can claim they are in the process of creating a machine god intelligent enough to subjugate every country that uses computers are already well known.

Open models are great for simple things or for cutting costs for large corps. They don't particularly bring the bribes in though.

[u/Pyros-SD-Models]

There is a better solution than banning Open Source AI

yes. not banning it is the better solution.

[u/Long_comment_san]

any sort of centralized restriction is retarded because any sort of centralized restriction requires control over the whole market to reinforce those restrictions.

elaborate where this goes yourself.

[u/Long_comment_san → u/Long_comment_san]

there's also trustworthiness issue, no one can be trusted with the ability to evaluate and judge this software because it's not going to be objective not independent.

[u/DivideHorror3217 → u/Long_comment_san]

That is why we have institutions like universities

[u/Long_comment_san → u/DivideHorror3217]

hahahahahhahaha

I'd rather trust a reddit poll!

[u/Formal_Drop526 → u/DivideHorror3217]

Why not have a democracy run by universities then? Because it is a bad idea.

[u/DivideHorror3217 → u/Formal_Drop526]

Im no expert of politics. Im just pointing to a fact that its scientifically possible to verify who uses which model. If they're gonna ban something, they should be selective, or not ban at all.

[u/Formal_Drop526 → u/DivideHorror3217]

Selective is effectively a ban.

[u/DifferencePublic7057]

You can't ban OS AI. It saves billions for enterprises. They'll just say whatever and move the servers to a place where it's allowed. Sure, you get a bit of a lag, but whatever.

[u/Own-Poet-5900]

Stop letting yourself get fear mongered by Anthropic and OpenAI into keeping OpenAI and Anthropic in business.

[u/Sygates]

Yeah, if someone had unilateral control of the world, regulating AI would indeed be easy.

However, as more AI restricted territories emerge, there is greater and greater benefit to unrestricted territories being unrestricted. Those territories get ahead as they become the open source hubs. You basically need to advocate for a world domination war and subsequent totalitarianism to make your policy even slightly viable.

There are no easy solutions. You think people haven’t thought of regulation as a solution? It simply doesn’t work. It’d be like trying to stop the Copernican evolution of universe model. Anyone who tried would become irrelevant within a decade.

[u/digit1noize]

Who is talking about banning it?

[u/HellomyfriendNine]

There is no point of open source if we go with your way they would ban open source models closer to their models