In late July 2024, Lina Khan, then the chair of the US Federal Commerce Fee, gave a speech at an occasion hosted by the San Francisco startup accelerator Y Combinator wherein she positioned herself as an advocate for open supply synthetic intelligence.
The occasion passed off as California lawmakers had been contemplating a landmark invoice referred to as SB 1047 that might have imposed new testing and security necessities on AI corporations. Critics of the laws, which was later vetoed by California governor Gavin Newsom, argued it might hamper the event and launch of open supply AI fashions. Khan referred to as for a much less restrictive method and stated that, with open fashions obtainable to them, “smaller gamers can carry their concepts to market.”
Within the days main as much as the occasion, Khan’s employees printed a weblog on the company’s web site emphasizing related speaking factors. The piece famous that “open supply” had been used to explain AI fashions with quite a lot of totally different traits. The authors as a substitute urged adopting the time period “open-weight,” that means a mannequin that has its coaching weights launched publicly, permitting anybody to examine, modify, or reuse it.
The Trump administration has since eliminated that weblog publish, two sources acquainted with the matter inform WIRED. The Web Archive’s Wayback Machine exhibits that the July 10, 2024, FTC weblog titled “On Open-Weights Basis Fashions” was redirected on September 1 of this 12 months to a touchdown web page for the FTC’s Workplace of Know-how.
One other publish from October 2023 titled “Shoppers Are Voicing Issues About AI,” authored by two FTC technologists, now equally redirects again to the company’s Workplace of Know-how touchdown web page. In line with the Wayback Machine, the redirect occurred in late August of this 12 months.
A 3rd FTC publish about AI that was authored by Khan’s employees and printed on January 3, 2025, titled “AI and the Threat of Shopper Hurt,” now results in an error display that claims “Web page not discovered.” In line with the Wayback Machine, that weblog publish was nonetheless stay on the FTC’s web site as of August 12, however by August 15 it had been faraway from the web. Within the authentic publish, Khan’s employees had written that the company was “more and more paying attention to AI’s potential for real-world situations of hurt—from incentivizing business surveillance to enabling fraud and impersonation to perpetuating unlawful discrimination.”
It’s not clear why the weblog posts had been faraway from the web. An FTC spokesperson didn’t reply to a request for remark. Khan, by means of a spokesperson, declined to remark.
