To be honest, that article includes several passages that looks like logical non-sequitur.
A functional definition of open source AI cannot require parties to commit potentially illegal acts with data, but the system still needs to be easy to build upon.
This is the deepest and biggest non-sequitur: nobody would force anyone to commit potentially illegal acts with data by providing a definition of OpenSource AI, at worst the developers can choose to not define their system as “OpenSource AI” but as Freeware or whatever.
In fact no definition can force anyone to use
- Content presumed under standard copyright is not technically open data (according to the European Union and other institutions).
- Personal data should be handled differently than source code (and not readily redistributed).
There are plenty of huge datasets that can be used to train useful AI systems without pose any of such legal issues (weather dataset, all sort of industrial machines-related and software-related logs and so on…)
As an example, only some of Ai2’s recent open dataset Dolma is totally clear of these questions. Additionally, if there is personal data in a dataset that is publicly uploaded, what happens to the nature of the “open source” dataset if personal data is later removed to comply with GDPR?
Simple: you update the model and release a new major version.
The old versions would not qualify anymore as OpenSource AI, as the whole dataset used to train the system are not available anymore, but the new version would.
And the removal of the personal data row would not impact any legally binding license on the old version.
And if you don’t build a new version out of the patched data (for any reason) other will, exactly as it routinely happens whenever a permissively licensed open source software got released with a proprietary or source-available license out of corporate greed.
We didn’t change the Open Source definition to accommodate for Redis license change. In the same way, we shouldn’t set a OpenSource AI definition that would be used, in fact, to open-wash anything.