Stability AI CEO steps down ‘to fix concentration of power in AI’

“It’s a hard problem, but I think we can fix it,” he wrote, hinting that he has a plan by adding, “Will be sharing more soon.”

Mostaque’s concerns about the centralization of generative AI are understandable, but not everyone is convinced that’s really what’s going on in the industry now.

Diversity in AI

“All of these companies have their own models,” said NYU Tandon school of engineering associate professor Chinmay Hegde, “so it’s a very big and diverse landscape — I wouldn’t call the situation tending toward centralized.”

Many of the most prominent AI models are closed source, with Meta being a notable exception among the major players but the number of AI models available, coupled with the relative novelty of the technology on the commercial market, creates a certain amount of diversity.

“This is all very nascent,” said Hegde. “We’re about 18 months removed from the first wave of [generative AI] coming out.

The closed-source nature of many of the most popular AIs — Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and so on — may be closer to the heart of Mostaque’s concerns about the state of the industry. Hegde noted that it’s important to retain a diverse landscape of AIs, particularly those that are open source, to address many of the key issues facing generative AI.

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AndyC

Andy Curtis is an award-winning security consultant, researcher and public speaker. He has been working in the computer security industry since the early 1990s, having been employed by state and federal government, leading healthcare and banking providers across three continents. He has given talks about computer security for some of the world’s largest companies, worked with law enforcement agencies on investigations into hacking groups, and is a regular voice on TV and radio explaining IT security threats.

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