Open source AI is the way forward, observe experts at AI Days-2024

Hyderabad: Experts deliberate on how open-source Artificial intelligence (AI) is the way forward. During the panel discussion on open-source AI, the experts emphasised a collaborative model with governments and communities as the stakeholders to take the open-source AI model forward. 

Dwelling on what constitutes an open-source AI model, Rajendran Kousik, principal architect, AWS, said, “I myself am a firm believer in open source. It could simply mean a way for a developer or a contributor to share their source of information with limited licencing or no licensing. So, anyone can flexibly use the information made available in the form of data, code, or anything else. This explains why open source is a popular topic now, it accelerates innovation because you do not have to start from scratch. For example, one need not start from scratch and can access large sources of data from different hubs and reframe his model to develop solutions and tools.”

Ranganathan B CTO and founder at Everest Engineering, highlighted the need for the involvement of the government to come up with laws similar to the AI Act for Europe to regulate the usage of open source AI in instances like coding atomic research. “The corporate sector should also play a vital role in supporting the government in such initiatives,” he added.

Ramesh Loganathan, CIE, IIT-H, stated, “Open source is a community, and we need not be stuck up too much with the definition of it. Open source is basically a community that comes together to create knowledge that is accessible to the larger community. This is what motivates the open source moment.” If one wants to create data related to Indian languages commercially, then the commercials involved stand very high. However, no one is going to invest in it. But, it is important, as it has a lot of social value associated with it. The open sources become valuable against this backdrop, he added.