Reframing "Open Source"
Dominant narratives say that “open source” equals transparency, collaboration, and access. In reality, AI is concentrated in the hands of a few powerful companies, and calls for openness serve as nostalgia for a creator-driven past rather than real access. Alix speaks with Meredith Whittaker to reframe “open source,” urging people to demand transparency and hold the systems shaping our future accountable.
MEREDITH WHITTAKER – OPEN SOURCE AI
Meredith Whittaker is the President of Signal. Her research and advocacy focus on the social implications of artificial intelligence and the tech industry responsible for it, with a particular emphasis on power and the political economy driving the commercialization of computational technology.
In this conversation, Whittaker unpacks “open-source AI.” In the context of software, “open source” referred to a set of precise technical protocols and processes that were arguably decentralizing. With AI, Whittaker says, this is not the case. Open-source AI, she argues, is not technical so much as vibes-based. The vast infrastructural consolidation of AI capabilities in the US and China is driving countries to embrace open-source AI—yet it is precisely the scale of this consolidation that renders open-source AI a false promise. In this context, Whittaker calls for a pragmatic return to a more technical understanding of open source—and questions power structures that sacrifice social life for short-term goals.
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"We should really be questioning how power formed in a way that enabled a handful of people—in service of their quarterly returns—to make socially significant decisions on behalf of everyone else, without scrutability, without clarity, and without democratic oversight."