Latest news with #GPT-oss
Business Insider
2 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
OpenAI finally went open — sort of. Here's why China should take note.
The US has been trailing China in the race for open-source AI. OpenAI's latest move could help close that gap — but it could also spur China to speed up its own releases. Last week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced GPT-oss, a family of large language models with "open weights." That means anyone can see or use information determining how the model works after it's been trained — but not the full source code. "We believe this is the best and most usable open model in the world," Altman wrote on X on Aug 6. GPT-oss is OpenAI's first open-weight language model in over five years, since the release of GPT-2 in 2019. OpenAI's models 'narrowed the gap' with China Ray Wang, the research director for semiconductors and emerging technology at Futurum Group, said OpenAI's open-weight release was likely influenced by the strong reception for open-sourced Chinese models such as those from DeepSeek, whose release shook markets in January. Wang said OpenAI's new models "narrowed the gap" with China thanks to their "competitive performance benchmarks and sizes against their Chinese counterparts." "China still maintains a slight lead, with a broader, higher number of competitive open-source models available in the market compared with the US," he added. Chinese open-source models include Alibaba's Qwen series, Baidu's ERNIE 4.5, and Moonshot's Kimi K2, alongside DeepSeek's recent V3 and R1 releases. But with the launch of OpenAI's open-weight models, Chinese firms might respond by accelerating their own open-source releases to stay top of mind for developers, said Wei Sun, the principal analyst for AI at Counterpoint Research. More importantly, they would aim for " ecosystem lock-ins" with models integrated into dominant domestic platforms like Alipay and WeChat "to monetize downstream rather than at the model layer," she added. Wang said China's drive to "push the boundaries of open-source models will likely continue unabated," adding that "OpenAI's action may accelerate and motivate their efforts." Why catching up matters If the US doesn't close the gap in open-source AI, Chinese models could gain more momentum and become the default foundation for applications and research around the world, Wang said. For American companies, that could be a problem, said Natham Lambert, a senior research scientist at the Allen Institute for AI. He told Business Insider that "if the US doesn't invest in the open AI race, the standards by which AI is developed will become Chinese." "American companies will become secondary markets, rather than the primary beneficiary of AI progress as they have been for the majority of AI's history," he added. China's push in open source is also more than just sharing the latest technology, said Lian Jye Su, the chief analyst at Omdia, a technology research and consulting firm. "It's also about developer engagement and influence, as well as a way to escape the increasingly restrictive access to US technology," he added. The Trump administration said in its " America's AI Action Plan" that the US "needs to ensure America has leading open models founded on American values" because they could become global standards in business and academic research. Tech leaders like Marc Andreessen have said it's vital to have a Western open-source champion, since the values, assumptions, and messaging embedded in a model are "baked" into its weights and can't easily be undone. Is it real momentum? Lambert called OpenAI's move a "major cultural step" for American tech firms, saying it signals that releasing open models "should be the standard" for leading AI companies. OpenAI is not the only US tech company that's embraced more open models. Elon Musk's xAI released Grok-1 with open weights, and Google DeepMind rolled out its Gemma series as open-weight models. Meta's Llama models are also open-weight. Mark Zuckerberg, who has been a major proponent of making AI more open-source, recently suggested that Meta's powerful models won't always be open-sourced. But analysts like Sun and Wang remain cautious about declaring a broader US shift toward open source. While GPT-oss has "strong performance and practical adoption potential," the models are not fully "open source AI" under the Open Source Initiative's definition, Sun said. Sun called OpenAI's release "more symbolic" than structural. There's also the matter of timing: OpenAI's timing, just days after Trump unveiled "America's AI Action Plan," underscores the political and PR value of the move, she said.
Time of India
06-08-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Elon Musk's xAI and OpenAI go Meta's way, to give away tech behind AI chatbots
Elon Musk 's xAI and OpenAI seem to be going in the same direction. Both the AI companies have announced open-sourcing their advanced AI models. While OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced the release of two new open-weight AI models, Tesla CEO revealed that his AI company will also make its Grok 2 chatbot open source next week. OpenAI's models are designed to help developers run advanced AI systems at lower costs while xAI's move aligns with its open-source philosophy, allowing external developers to inspect, modify, and build upon Grok 2's capabilities. 'GPT-oss is out! We made an open model that performs at the level of o4-mini and runs on a high-end laptop (WTF!!) (and a smaller one that runs on a phone). Super proud of the team; big triumph of technology,' Sam Altman posted on X. Similarly, Musk said, 'It's high time we open sourced Grok 2. Will make it happen next week.' 'We've just been fighting fires and burning the 4am oil nonstop for a while now,' he added. This shift towards open-sourcing like OpenAI and xAI mirrors similar initiatives from other prominent tech companies, including Meta and DeepSeek , who have already made their AI models publicly available. What is open-sourcing Open-sourcing technology means making the source code of a software, or the design blueprint of a product, publicly accessible. Unlike proprietary or 'closed source' software, where only the developers can see and alter the code, open-source code is transparent. Users are generally free to run the program for any purpose, whether personal, educational, or commercial. Further, anyone can inspect the code to understand how it works, learn from it and make changes or improvements. Open-sourcing also fosters a decentralised and collaborative development model. A global community of developers, users, and enthusiasts can contribute to the project by submitting bug fixes, new features, and documentation. Since the code is open for public scrutiny, vulnerabilities and bugs can be identified and fixed more quickly by the community. This transparency can build greater trust in the software. Apple Confirms: Majority of iPhones Sold in US Are Now Made in India
Business Insider
05-08-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Sam Altman launches GPT-oss, OpenAI's first open-weight AI language model in over 5 years
OpenAI 's AI models are getting more open. At least, someof them are. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced GPT-oss on Tuesday, an "open" family of language models with "open weights" that the CEO said can operate locally on a "high-end laptop" and smartphones. An AI model with "open weights" is one whose fully trained parameter weights are made publicly downloadable, so anyone can run, inspect, or fine-tune the AI model locally. "We believe this is the best and most usable open model in the world," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote on X. There are two different models: gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b. The smaller model is designed to run on "most desktops and laptops, " while the larger model is geared toward higher-end equipment. Altman said GPT-oss has "strong real-world performance comparable to o4-mini." Just before OpenAI's announcement, rival Anthropic revealed the Claude Opus 4.1. Tuesday's announcement was not the long-rumored ChatGPT-5, which could arrive as soon as this week. Instead, the new model is OpenAI's first open-weight language model since the release of GPT-2 in 2019. "As part of this, we are quite hopeful that this release will enable new kinds of research and the creation of new kinds of products," Altman wrote. "We expect a meaningful uptick in the rate of innovation in our field, and for many more people to do important work than were able to before." Altman had previously signaled that OpenAI would return to releasing at least some open model, saying that, "We're going to do a very powerful open source model" that was "better than any current open source model out there."
