Welcome all Aliens

Happy Wednesday to all the norms out there. Today’s topic was spurred on from a YouTube video I was watching a few weeks back. You might have seen this video circulating around for Elon’s comments towards Disney’s Bob Iger when he decided to pull advertising from X.

This was the main part of the video that went viral (and by viral, I mean viral), but there was something else in that 1.5 hour long video that was better than that sound clip (about 30 minutes after this moment). The full video is here so if you’re bored, give it a watch.

The clip that I’m talking about starts at 45:00 and only last for a few minutes.

A Few months back, Sam Altman (ex and current CEO) got ousted at Microsoft’s OpenAi. Elon (along with Sam as the initial 2 board members) started that company with full intention of meaning what the name meant: OpenAi. Elon says he named it that due to the fact that the project started off as an open source, non profit - 501c3. This was about the betterment of humanity.

Now, and I quote, he says it should be called “super-closed-source-for-maximum-profit-ai”.

Based off Elon’s work ethic (alone) but also adding his successes in, I trust him and his judgement when he said (in regards to Sam’s firing) “if Ilya felt strongly enough to fire Sam, the world should know what was that reason.” The world never got that reason.

Today is a day to start the conversation on what open source actually means, why is it important, and where we go from here.

TLDR: we’re covering open source and why that fricken matters.  

Off we go!

What is Open Source?

You hear in the news sometimes about certain software projects and how they’re “open source”. The interviewer smiles, gives 2 thumbs up, and sends a “lights on, nobody’s home” stare really convincing you he knows what he’s talking about **2004 eye roll**.

Open Source, specifically talking about software, means the ability for anyone to see, modify, or share. The source code of a program (specifically software) is made public for people to improve or make another version of the program.

In lamin terms, whoever owns the software says “hey, for anyone who wants to look at this code and try to make it better, you’re more than welcome to”. On GitHub, if somebody wants to, they’ve got the ability to pull that code, read it and run it on their machine, and make changes how they see fit outside of the creators vision (within the bounds of the guidelines that the creator has set).

Speaking as a CEO: Not all technology is better this way, but a lot of times, it does make it nice for development, especially when you have a large base of passionates that really believe in what you’re doing, you can save a few dollar bills to allocate in other areas, along with speeding up dev sprints.

Everybody loves a good sprint.

Why does this Matter?

(everything I’m about to mention is specifically pertaining to the ai space, not web2 software from 2012)

For somebody reading this in their office or on the way to class, why does this matter to you? Open source is in my eyes massively important.

When we’re talking about ai development in 2024, it’s not on the same level as creating a social media platform back in 2012. We didn’t have a threat of a social media platform back then potentially turning into a sentient being doing backflips and going on to the Tonight Show.

In 2024, we have ai projects doing those things.

IMO, it’s crucially important to have these projects open source for the ability to have other eyes take a look under the hood. The more UNBIASED eyes you have looking at something, the more they’ll find the good, the bad, and the ugly with time to fix the latter. We’ll be able to get it out to media (assuming non bias there as well) for the public to be made aware of certain findings and developments in ai.

These projects like OpenAi that removed its open source ability have lost trust in some people to do the right thing when the right thing is the hardest, least profitable choice to make.

When you shortcut and pull the curtain to cover what you’re doing, it only gives me FAR LESS TRUST into openAI, and even Microsoft for that matter, to believe that they’ll make the right decision for humanity when the time comes.

This is not necessary for other types of tech, but with the implications of ai and how that interacts with humanity for the future, I would recommend using platforms as much as you can that are open source.

Wrap it up Zander

Two Things:

1) Not all open source projects are good and not all closed source projects are bad. But having more rather than less open source projects in the ai space will truly benefit society. And I understand as much money as Google, Apple, Microsoft, and maybe a few others have, they’ll tell me to go pound sand.

My response:

2) This also does not mean that we won’t stop talking about ChatGPT. The tech is pretty remarkable and people are using it. They’ll continue to use it after reading this article. So we’ll give more ways to better utilize. But if we could start the conversation of what it would look like to transition to open source projects across the field in ai, that’s what this newsletter aimed to do.

ON FRIDAY, we’re going to give you a list of resources you can use that are open source so stay on the look out (sent out normal time - 9:30 AM CST)

As always you can hit us back by replying directly to this email, or you can find me on X as @zanderhproduct or follow Brady at @bradyfowlkes.

We’ll see ya tomorrow 🙂 

Zander Huff

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