Claims posited around openness often lack precision, frequently focused on only one stage in the development-to-deployment life cycle of AI systems, often neglecting substantial industry concentration in large-scale AI development and deployment and thus warping common-sense understandings of openness.
From the promise that open source democratizes software development, that many eyes on open code could ensure its integrity and security, or that open source levels the playing field and allows the innovative to triumph, open source software did many of these things, to varying degrees.
At present, powerful actors are seeking to shape policy using claims that 'open' AI is either beneficial to innovation and democracy, on the one hand, or detrimental to safety, on the other. When policy is being shaped, definitions matter.
Just as many traditional open source software projects were co-opted in various ways by large technology companies, we show how rhetoric around 'open' AI is frequently wielded in ways that consolidate power rather than disperse it.
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