On Thursday, a document reportedly written by a senior engineer at Google was leaked on the site Semianalysis. That document shows an increasing concern that, as artificial intelligence tools explode into every aspect of life, there are no gatekeepers on where things are going. Google is not at the cutting edge. Neither is ChatGPT creator OpenAI.
“The uncomfortable truth is,” wrote Google’s Luke Sernau, “We aren’t positioned to win this arms race and neither is OpenAI. While we’ve been squabbling, a third faction has been quietly eating our lunch. I’m talking, of course, about open source. Plainly put, they are lapping us.”
Open source tools that are now in millions of hands allow individuals and small groups to race past what were seen as roadblocks to AI’s further advance. They’re building tools that are faster, smaller, and more easily updated. Some of these AI models can run on systems as small as a phone and deliver results better than those running on whole banks of high-speed computers.
It’s not just a challenge to the dominance of big tech companies: It’s a signal that AI development has reached a stage where no one can possibly hit the brakes.
