Debian debates AI models and the DFSG

Posted Apr 26, 2025 21:31 UTC (Sat) by mb (subscriber, #50428)
In reply to: Debian debates AI models and the DFSG by kleptog
Parent article: Debian debates AI models and the DFSG

>and for what purpose? People are just going to use the final model

Just use the closed source binary? Why would you want to have the source? Just use the binary!

Debian debates AI models and the DFSG

Posted Apr 27, 2025 11:25 UTC (Sun) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (1 responses)

The fundamental difference is that where a binary program can't be used for anything else than execution, the weights of an ML model contain everything there is about the model and can be used as the input to create new models. It can be studied and modified in useful ways.

In many ways, the model is actually a suitable stand in for the original data. I think that for the vast majority of use cases people are better off taking an existing public model and fine-tuning it to suit their purpose with their own data, than trying to rebuild a model from scratch at great expense.

Debian debates AI models and the DFSG

Posted Apr 29, 2025 8:46 UTC (Tue) by taladar (subscriber, #68407) [Link]

I think the heart of the problem of defining a useful free software analog for AI models is precisely that we haven't really figured out good ways to inspect and modify them yet. Even the experts in the field struggle to modify models deliberately to fix individual flawed behavior/responses or larger scale behavior patterns or to determine the reason a model behaved in the way it did.

As long as that is the case free software concepts are hard to apply to AI models.