With the FOSS movement, many systems, projects, and codes have been made public so that every coder can contribute to developing a particular project. Mozilla is one such project that is free and open-source software. But is OpenAI open-source?
Time to find that out!
Is OpenAI Open Source?
Before we dive deep into this, you must know it’s neither black nor white; it is in the middle. OpenAI is not fully open-sourced. Initially, when it was made, its main focus was to be open-sourced; hence, the word “open” in it was added. After Microsoft took over, it was no longer open-source.
Some projects under OpenAI are, though, open to contribution. For example, you can create pull requests on some projects like ‘gym,’ which is a toolkit for reinforcement learning (RL). You can access some other repositories of OpenAI on GitHub.
When you use the Playground, you will see how you are credited with $5 for the first three months, and once the three-month period is over, the billing begins.
Open Source Projects Of OpenAI
I. GPT
The most popular project currently is GPT. With GPT-4’s release, many people have invested their time in this. GPT stands for Generative Pretrained Transformer. It can generate text content, perform tasks like text classification and question answering, and apply various deep learning approaches. GPT differs from conventional machine learning techniques in that it pre-trains on a substantial quantity of text input before performing a variety of tasks involving natural language processing.
It has performed admirably in several NLP tasks thanks to its highly effective training methodology. However, the GPT-3 project has been made “read-only” on GitHub. So, it is not entirely open source; you can only view the project.
II. Gym
Gym is a Python toolkit for reinforcement learning research that includes RL environments, such as gaming, robotics and control, computer vision, augmented reality, etc. Additionally, it gives users a uniform interface to design tasks and train models. You can also assess the performance.
III. Whisper
The whisper project is an open-source automatic voice recognition system that handles various languages. It still operates effectively and can reach a very high accuracy rate, with quick speech speeds, accents, background distortion, etc.
IV. Baselines
Baselines is a collection of reinforcement learning algorithm implementations. The research community uses these algorithms to replicate, improve, and find new ideas. The algorithms can help in establishing solid foundations for future study too. The primary language used in this is Python.
You can find more of OpenAI’s repositories here. Check them out.
How Does Open Source Play A Significant Role?
Open-source software is computer software made available under a license that allows users to use, examine, modify, and share the software and its source code with anyone. Open-source software may be created collaboratively and publicly.
Let us discuss how open source can help:
- Open source makes technology agility possible, often providing several solutions to a given issue.
- Open source prevents an IT business from being hindered because a vendor doesn’t offer a specific capability.
- All software under open source is free of cost.
- You get a mix of all talented coders and engineers.
- There is a lot of flexibility and transparency.
Conclusion
You must have observed by now how all projects under OpenAI are not open-sourced while some still are. So, we can say that OpenAI is not entirely open source; only some of it is. Earlier, the organization’s goal was to make it open source completely. This change happened post Microsoft’s partnership with the non-profit organization.
Are you fascinated by OpenAI? We have more in store for you: Is OpenAI Safe? Concerns That Bother Us.