A coalition of companies argues in a fire letter that open-source innovation should be protected in the new EU AI Act. By doing so, they want to ensure that any requirements do not hinder open-source AI development work.
The alliance of AI developers, including Hugging Face, GitHub, EleutherAI, Creative Commons, LAION and Open Future, are calling on the EU to consider open-source AI development work.
In its policy-paper Supporting Open Source and Open Science in the EU AI Act, the alliance argues that in the upcoming AI Act, the EU provides sufficient guarantees that it is workable for open-source development work.
According to them, the requirements set forth in the regulations should not be so strict that it becomes practically unworkable for open source developers to carry out their AI development work or otherwise counterproductive.
No favouritism
Above all, the EU must ensure that very strict laws and regulations that favour the closed and proprietary AI systems of large AI developers such as OpenAI, Anthropic or Google are not included in the AI Act. According to the alliance, such laws and regulations would greatly disadvantage the open AI ecosystem.
In the fire letter, the AI developers come up with five text changes for the draft version of the EU AI Act, which should emphasize the importance of open source for AI development.
Too much focus on API model
Representatives of open-source AI model developers also believe that research for the EU AI Act focuses too much on the API model to minimize the risks of AI. However, the focus on APIs is not applicable to an open-source model, so the latter may be disadvantaged in the upcoming laws and regulations.
EU is at the forefront
Fortunately, open-source AI developers are happy to see clear laws and regulations in the EU to curb any risks surrounding AI, VentureBeat writes. Like the current GDPR laws and regulations for personal data privacy, the EU AI Act can serve as a model that other countries can also base their laws and regulations on. This is also known as the “Brussels effect.
Also read: 150 European companies write open letter on dangers of AI Act