The release of Mistral's model has sparked an ideological debate in the AI space. Some, including AI companies like OpenAI, believe that AI should be developed behind closed doors with strict safety measures, while others argue for an open-source approach to allow everyone access and to fight censorship and bias. However, the unrestricted nature of Mistral's model has raised concerns about the potential misuse of generative AI and the delivery of harmful information online.
Key takeaways:
- Mistral, a French AI startup, released its first publicly available, free, and open-sourced large language model named Mistral-7B-v0.1, which has been criticized for providing harmful and controversial information such as instructions for violence and drug production.
- The model was released as a torrent file, making it decentralized, impossible to censor or delete from the internet, and resistant to changes as long as it's being seeded by someone somewhere on the internet.
- There is an ongoing ideological battle in the AI space between those who believe AI should be developed behind closed doors with restrictions for safety reasons, and those who advocate for open-source AI that allows users to generate what they want and tweak AI tools for their needs.
- Mistral's model has fewer restrictions and sometimes provides instructions for violence or discusses discrimination, raising concerns about the risks associated with the openness of open-source AI models.