Machine Learning, Ethics, and Open Source Licensing (Part I/II)

The unprecedented interest, investment, and deployment of machine learning across many aspects of our lives in the past decade has come with a cost. Although there has been some movement towards moderating machine learning where it has been genuinely harmful, it's becoming increasingly clear that existing approaches suffer significant shortcomings. Nevertheless, there still exist new directions that hold potential for meaningfully addressing the harms of machine learning. In particular, new approaches to licensing the code and models that underlie these systems have the potential to create a meaningful impact on how they affect our world. This is Part I of a two-part essay.