Hugging Face, Github and more join forces to defend open source in European AI legislation
An open letter has been sent to the EU by the AI community to ease rules for Open-Source AI. Creative Commons and tech firms like GitHub and Hugging Face are urging the European Union to review the European AI Act. They claim that the existing rules and regulations limit their companies’ further development.
Open Source Collaborative Companies:
GitHub and Hugging Face are well-known platforms. GitHub uses Git for version control, often for collaborative software development projects. It is a notable web-based hosting service company. The Hugging Face contributes to Natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning. They provide AI models and Libraries through their platform.
European Union Policy:
These companies are calling on EU policymakers to revisit regulating Upstream open-source projects. In a blog post, GitHub said: “This would be incompatible with open development practices and counter to the needs of individual developers and non-profit research organizations”.
The AI leaders have offered five practical recommendations to ensure Open AI development practices are not obstructed due to the New AI laws. The laws are hard to comply with and are truly overboard.
The European Union passed its version of the act on June 14 by a large majority. There were 499 votes in favor of the act, 28 against it, and 93 abstentions. The act will eventually become law when all 27 State members agree on a common version. The goal is to pass the AI Act in 2023 before the European Parliament elections happen.
Yacine Jernite, ML at Hugging Face, emphasizes the importance of Open Source AI innovation, saying, “We think that it’s important for people to be able to choose between base models, between components, to mix and match as they need.”.
This regulatory framework aims to classify AI systems according to the risks users can be exposed to while encouraging inventions. The open letter states:” AI requires regulations that can mitigate risks by providing sufficient standards and oversight and establishing clear liability and resources for harm.” The EU has been the tech regulation trendsetter and is keen on developing a law that starts a global rules dialogue where Open Source developers are given seats.
