Mark Zuckerberg and Daniel Ek on why Europe should embrace open-source AI

livemint.com:

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. THIS IS AN important moment in technology. Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform the world—increasing human productivity, accelerating scientific progress and adding trillions of dollars to the global economy.

But, as with every innovative leap forward, some are better positioned than others to benefit. The gaps between those with access to build with this extraordinary technology and those without are already beginning to appear. That is why a key opportunity for European organisations is through open-source AI—models whose weights are released publicly with a permissive licence.

This ensures power isn’t concentrated among a few large players and, as with the internet before it, creates a level playing field. The internet largely runs on open-source technologies, and so do most leading tech companies. We believe the next generation of ideas and startups will be built with open-source AI, because it lets developers incorporate the latest innovations at low cost and gives institutions more control over their data.

It is the best shot at harnessing AI to drive progress and create economic opportunity and security for everyone. Meta open-sources many of its AI technologies, including its state-of-the-art Llama large language models, and public institutions and researchers are already using these models to speed up medical research and preserve languages. With more open-source developers than America has, Europe is particularly well placed to make the most of this open-source AI wave.