SDG 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
SDG 16: Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions
Institutions: Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology; Ministry of Commerce & Industry
This primer unpacks "AI openness," emphasizing that βopen sourceβ is an insufficient term for the AI domain, where openness spans a spectrum - from closed systems to fully open models encompassing source code, trained model weights, and datasets. Open-weight foundation models - with publicly accessible weights - now constitute over half of available models, led by the United States, China, and France.
The report outlines clear benefits: improved innovation through reuse, independent evaluation, external auditing, broader access, enhanced talent development, support for sensitive content, and on-device deployments. Equally, it highlights risks: misuse by malicious actors (e.g., deepfakes, cyberattacks, CSAM, IP breaches), privacy vulnerabilities, irreversibility of releases, and erosion of safeguards. Policymakers are urged to assess marginal benefits and risks - those arising from openness relative to closed alternatives - as part of a broader risk-assessment framework.
Follow the full report here: