Why AI Should be Free and How it Can Improve Humanity

Submitted by Antique-Ad-6055 t3_122lez2 in Futurology

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform society and improve the lives of people all over the world. However, the current model of paid access to AI technology limits its potential impact and benefits. In this post, we'll explore why AI should be made available for free and how this can lead to positive changes in society.

Reasoning: Firstly, making AI free would democratize access to this technology, which is currently available only to a select few who can afford it. By making AI freely available, individuals and organizations from diverse backgrounds will be able to access and use AI to improve their lives and the lives of others. This will create a more equitable society where everyone has the opportunity to benefit from the transformative power of AI.

Secondly, making AI free will accelerate innovation and progress. Currently, only large corporations and wealthy individuals can afford to invest in AI research and development. By making AI accessible to everyone, we can tap into the collective creativity and intelligence of a wider range of people, leading to more diverse and innovative AI solutions. This can drive progress in fields such as healthcare, education, and climate change.

Lastly, making AI free would promote ethical and responsible use of this technology. When access to AI is restricted to those who can afford it, there is a risk that it will be used for harmful purposes or to further the interests of a small group of people. By making AI available to everyone, we can encourage its use for the greater good and ensure that it is developed and used responsibly.

In conclusion, making AI free has the potential to create a more equitable society, accelerate progress and innovation, and promote ethical and responsible use of this technology. While there are certainly challenges to be overcome in terms of funding and implementation, the benefits of making AI freely available are too great to ignore.

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AdamCohn t1_jdqqe8q wrote

Who is going to pay the talented and expensive technologists who build these AI models?

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Antique-Ad-6055 OP t1_jdquhx8 wrote

In the open-source model of AI development, talented and expensive technologists who build AI models can still be paid for their work. However, the funding model would be different from the traditional approach of individual enterprises paying for the development of AI models.

One idea and probably the best, is for funding to come from government agencies or non-profit organizations that prioritize the development of AI for the greater good. For example, the US government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has a long history of funding AI research, and non-profits like the OpenAI Foundation and the Partnership on AI also invest in AI development.

Another way is for companies to contribute to open-source AI development as part of their corporate social responsibility initiatives. This would allow them to support the development of AI that benefits society as a whole, while also promoting their brand as socially responsible.

People who work on open-source AI projects can also be paid through alternative funding models such as grants or crowdfunding. For example, the grant-making organization Mozilla has provided funding for AI development through their Mozilla Fellowship program.

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ItsAConspiracy t1_jdv5h54 wrote

The expensive part isn't the people, it's the mountain of GPU required to train the AI.

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mtsr t1_jdqr3js wrote

First: At-cost is certainly possible! Free might be, but there also lots of other things we need to spend our limited resources on as a society. Some of them definitely higher on the list than AI access.

But it would require finding a different way of funding future research and development. This is already partly covered by government-funded research, but that doesn’t necessarily cover the whole route to making AI actually usable and available to the public.

Second: There’s a seriously large difference in cost between using a trained AI model (such as ChatGPT) and training it in the first place. The second would be far more costly to make available for free (orders of magnitude, really). But without it, possible innovations from making AI available for free would be far more limited.

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Chemical_Ad_5520 t1_jdwnnaw wrote

I agree that this is how things should go. Not that publicly funded and freely available AI systems can't become corrupted by the interests of a powerful few, but it would be best to at least try to create and maintain it, because profit driven control by a powerful few is the default future if we can't agree on another action plan.

It's not only that equitable sharing of the benefits of AI creates positive change in humanity, but it also eases the critical problem of class division, which is set to create some real issues for everyone going forward, particularly the working/consumer class. If we give everyone the benefits of the best information and tools available, then we solve the bulk of the class division problem and can move on to figuring out how to mitigate the risks of the highly dynamic economy that would result. If we just let the entire economy get automated and monopolized in the hands of a few, then things will be weird and/or shitty and the playing field might never get leveled if we drift too far apart. Maybe that's okay, but I bet it would suck.

Government funding to provide people with a range of information and digital tools would be good. Nonprofit products could do the same thing with enough donation. In the absence of those options, we could always hope for an enterprise to be responsible with this technology and find ways to fund it while making it accessible and fair. But probably, if we don't find a way to organize and lobby for the interests of the masses in a unified way, the best tools will continue to be owned by a small group.

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Goblinstomper t1_jdqr85z wrote

It's machine learning not true AI, and its only a tool, and like any other tool, someone has to develop, build and maintain it.

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Antique-Ad-6055 OP t1_jdqttni wrote

But don’t you think this technology is to great for advances in humanity to not have an open source for it, and if you have a product with integrated AI and you want to sell it, sure go ahead but not able to have open source for AI will create a close market and a poor utilization of the technology

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WaitingForNormal t1_jdqus7y wrote

Which AI are you talking about? There’s more than one. And which one should we trust? AI has been proven to make lots of mistakes. You name a lot of benefits of AI, but I’m not sure in what way you mean. “AI will improve our lives”, ok, list all the ways how that would happen. And once again, which AI are we tapping into, there is no current central AI. Sounds like a lot of pie in the sky thinking.

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Antique-Ad-6055 OP t1_jdqw2if wrote

Hey, I get where you're coming from. You're right that there are multiple types of AI out there, and I don’t get this, it can be hard to know which ones we can trust? Plus, we've all heard stories of AI making mistakes, like when facial recognition software misidentified people or when chatbots gave inappropriate responses.

When I talk about the benefits of AI, what I mean is that it has the potential to make our lives better in a lot of ways. For example, it could help doctors diagnose diseases more accurately or help farmers optimize crop yields. It could also make our devices and homes smarter and more intuitive, so we can save time and energy.

But I get it, it can sound like a lot of hype. It's true that there's no one central AI that we're tapping into, and we still have a lot of work to do to make sure that the AI we use is reliable and ethical.

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