May 30, 2023
An AI Challenge: Balancing Open and Closed Systems
Technology debates are often a tug-of-war between open and closed systems.
On one side, open allows interoperability, customization, and integration with third-party software or hardware. Champions highlight how openness promotes transparency, accountability, competition, and significant innovation. On the other side, defenders of closed argue that they are more stable and secure and better protect their owners’ property interests.
Navigating the spectrum between open and closed is critical to effective artificial intelligence policy. The right balance will promote innovation and competition while managing AI’s significant risks.
Much of AI’s creation and evolution have happened thanks to open-source development and diffusion. Numerous widely-adopted AI open-source projects provide development frameworks and libraries such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, and MXNet, and many companies – including Hugging Face, Stability AI, Nomic AI, and Meta – have released open-source AI models or enable open-source development.
Google and OpenAI have traditionally stood on the side of openness. Both have published AI research and open-source tools. Google, for example, originally developed TensorFlow in-house and later released it as an open-source software library for building AI.
Read the full article from CEPA.
More from CNAS
-
Commentary
Technology & National Security / National Security Law
CNAS Insights | The Case for Long-Term CISA 2015 ReauthorizationLast fall, one of the United States’ most important cyber defense laws expired. For six weeks, the private sector no longer had legal protections to share critical cyber threa...
By Carrie Cordero & Morgan Peirce
-
Commentary
Technology & National Security
Taiwan Is the Key to AI DominanceA country determined to win the defining technological race of the century can’t allow its chief rival to control the industrial base on which that race depends....
By David Feith
-
Podcast
Defense / Technology & National Security
WarTalk: Iran War with Jack ShanahanThe “love tap” White House readout. A failed convoy operation. KSA pulling overflight rights. Iran with 70% of its missile force still intact. And one F-15E shoot-down from ab...
By Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan & Jordan Schneider
-
Reports
Technology & National Security
American AI Companies Can’t Get Enough ChipsIn 2026, artificial intelligence (AI) chip production has become a binding constraint on the pace of the AI compute buildout. Demand for computing power to train and deploy ad...
By James Sanders, Janet Egan & Rory Madigan
