Today’s Times reports that META has released its AI codes to the public so that anyone can use them as a base for creating chatboxes.   The argument is that the technology works best if shared and that it is the disseminators of chatboxes that should police and prevent misuse.

Critics naturally pointed out that regulation at the point of creation, which could be controlled by code inventors at for example the Open AI, META and Google level, thus becomes impossible.

The META release is particularly potent because, according to the Times, the version provided to the public includes what is known as “the weight.”  The algorithms have been processed to reflect what was already learned from various data sets; that learning takes time, money, sophistication, specialized chips not generally available.  This release thus not only empowers new chatboxes, but also provides a technological head start to anyone using the technology.  This may advantage the good guys, but not everyone has benign intent.

Although commentary on the details of AI releases best rests with those with specific technical expertise, which excludes this blogger, I am disquieted by the comments of a Berkeley researcher, who drew an analogy to the sale of grenades in a public grocery store. His research disclosed that the AI provided instructions for disposition of dead bodies, as well as generating racist comments supporting the view of Hitler.