India stands to lose if US lobbyists win in restricting open source software, says former Coursera CEO Andrew Ng

Andrew said some are “arguing incorrectly” that it would be better for the US to restrict open source, as the world’s largest economy is way ahead of others in generative AI. Representative image

India would be at a disadvantage if lobbyists in the US succeed in their efforts to restrict open source software, according to Andrew NG, the founder and CEO of Landing AI and former CEO of Coursera.

User of an open source can use, modify, and distribute the software or platform and its source code to anyone or for any purpose. Andrew was referring to an announcement by the US government last year, which states that the US government has to be apprised first by tech companies whenever they train an artificial intelligence (AI) model involving a significant amount of computing power. Reports suggest the rule could come into force very soon.

"If those efforts to squash up succeed, it will shut down tonnes of innovative methods and data, and make it much harder for lots of countries, including India, to take advantage of this technology," Andrew said at the Nasscom Technology Leadership Forum (NTLF) 2024.

He said that there has been “intense lobbying efforts” from some of the big tech companies, who have made some significant investments and training in very large AI models. “But I was actually pretty surprised... at the intensity of the lobbying efforts to try to get the US government, and to some extent other governments, to put in place stifling regulations requiring licensing,” he added.

Andrew said the White House order on the regulation made a “mistake” in thinking that the bigger AI models are more risky. “If you say big AI models training is more risky, that's a lie that the big tech lobbyists would love to have,” he said.

He further said it would be a “tragedy” if these lobbying efforts succeed.

Andrew said some are “arguing incorrectly” that it would be better for the US to restrict open source, as the world’s largest economy is way ahead of others in developing generative AI. “If the attempts to slash open source software succeeds, almost everyone around the world will simply be losers,” he added.

He added innovation would be thwarted if it were to be made difficult for researchers to publish software building blocks on the internet for free.

“The heart of the matter is do we think the world is better off with more intelligence or less intelligence,” he asked while in conversation with Abhishek Singh, additional secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

It would be difficult for many countries to easily access open source technology, he said.

As to why big tech companies are lobbying for these restrictions, Andrew said they have spent hundreds of millions of dollars trading large models, and it would be “really annoying” if someone else open sources and gets access to it.

Nonetheless, he said that AI regulation is needed.