Why Big Tech Companies Are Open-Sourcing Their AI Systems

The world's biggest technology companies are handing over the keys to their success, making their artificial intelligence systems open-source. Traditionally, computer users could see the end product of what a piece of software did by, for instance, writing a document in Microsoft Word or playing a video game. But the underlying programming -- the source code -- was proprietary, kept from public view. Opening source material in computer science is a big deal because the more people that look at code, the more likely it is that bugs and long-term opportunities and risks can be worked out. Openness is increasingly a big deal in science as well, for similar reasons.