Open Source AI Definition – Weekly update July 1

An open call to test OpenVLA

Last week @quaid suggested conducting a controlled experiment to determine if data information alone is sufficient to recreate an AI model with fidelity to the original. He shared insights from the OpenVLA project, noting its possible compliance with the requirements of draft v0.0.8 and suggesting a test suite to compare models created with full datasets versus data information.
- To this, @Stefano noted that there also are some master students at CMU who are conducting similar experiments to “kick the tires” of the draft definition.
- @quaid proposed more precise criteria for evaluating model similarity, such as “functionally similar” or “practically similar” and further suggested detailing the values sought from open data datasets to improve the experiment’s framework.

@hook has shared a research paper they found interesting and relevant tilted Rethinking open source generative AI: open-washing and the EU AI Act.
- This paper has been shared before by its author @mark and discussed in the context of whether the OSAID should contain a partially open license, arguing that in doing so, open washing would be limited, stating that “ I think providers and users of LLMs should not be free to create oil spills in our information landscape and I think RAIL provides useful guardrails for that.” This would highlight the “degrees of openness”.
- They too present their findings in a visualization of the degrees of openness of different systems.
  - This is a point we have discussed before and note that the OSAID will not be a partially open license but a binary one. See week 22 summary for the context of this discussion.

We held our 12th town hall meeting last week. You can access the recording and slides here if you missed it. The town hall presented some ideas for the next draft of the Definition, making it clear that there is no agreement yet on the data information concept and that part is still subject to change.
A new town hall meeting is scheduled for Friday, July 12.