Open Source AI: Transparency, Sovereignty, and Who Controls the Data

In this episode of Cyber Sentries, host John Richards is joined by JJ Asghar, an Open Source Champion and Developer Advocate at IBM. They explore the importance of open source in the AI world, how transparency can allow for AI sovereignty, and why we should care about who controls the data.

JJ shares his journey into the AI space at IBM and his strong opinions formed from working on open source AI projects. The discussion delves into the differences between mainstream closed-source AI models and the emerging open-source alternatives, highlighting the privacy and trust aspects that are becoming increasingly important, especially outside the United States.

Questions we answer in this episode:

• How does open source fit into the recent surge of AI?
• What are the benefits of open-source AI models compared to closed-source ones?
• Why is AI sovereignty important, and how does it relate to open source?

The conversation covers the challenges of building and running AI models, the compute resources required, and how open-source approaches can provide more transparency and control. JJ explains the concept of AI sovereignty, where countries and organizations want to run AI within their borders and under their own rules and restrictions. This brings up issues of hardware accessibility and the lifecycle of AI models.

Key Takeaways:

• Open-source AI allows for greater transparency and trust compared to closed-source models
• AI sovereignty is becoming increasingly important for countries with strict privacy laws
• The lifecycle of AI involves training, fine-tuning, and inferencing, each with different compute requirements

While open source offers many benefits, the discussion also touches on the challenges, such as the potential for model poisoning and the current lack of genealogy in AI models. Despite these hurdles, open source remains a powerful force in the AI world, with the potential to provide more eyes on the code and faster problem resolution.

This episode offers valuable insights into the complex world of AI, the role of open source, and the importance of data control and transparency. Whether you're a developer, a security professional, or simply interested in the future of AI, this conversation provides a thought-provoking look at the challenges and opportunities ahead.

Links & Notes

• IBM's open source foundational model Granite
• Granite Foundation Models Paper
• Hugging Face
• IBM's coding assistance project
• InstructLab
• Crew AI
• AI Sovereignty Paper
• Learn more about Paladin Cloud
• Got a question? Ask us here!

• (00:04) - Welcome to Cyber Sentries
• (00:55) - Meet JJ Asghar
• (03:17) - Working with AI
• (04:29) - AI and Open Source
• (10:31) - Approach
• (14:38) - Sovereignty
• (18:20) - Inferencing
• (20:47) - Black Box Situation
• (30:10) - Weighing the Differences
• (35:09) - Timeline
• (40:39) - Finding JJ
• (42:06) - Communities
• (44:49) - Wrap Up