Machine Learning, Ethics, and Open Source Licensing (Part II)
Part II/II: What Open Source Licensing Can Bring to ML Ethics
Machine Learning, Ethics, and Open Source Licensing
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.
In Part II of a two-part essay, Chris Moran explores the nuances of open-source licensing, and what new approaches to open-source might bring to ensuring the ethical usage of ML.