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 came about as California lawmakers had been contemplating a landmark invoice known as SB 1047 that may 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 could hamper the event and launch of open supply AI fashions. Khan known as for a much less restrictive strategy and mentioned that, with open fashions out there to them, “smaller gamers can carry their concepts to market.”
Within the days main as much as the occasion, Khan’s workers revealed 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 steered adopting the time period “open-weight,” which means a mannequin that has its training weights launched publicly, permitting anybody to examine, modify, or reuse it.
The Trump administration has since eliminated that weblog put up, two sources aware of 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 yr to a touchdown web page for the FTC’s Workplace of Know-how.
One other put up from October 2023 titled “Shoppers Are Voicing Considerations About AI,” authored by two FTC technologists, now equally redirects again to the company’s Workplace of Know-how touchdown web page. In response to the Wayback Machine, the redirect occurred in late August of this yr.
A 3rd FTC put up about AI that was authored by Khan’s workers and revealed on January 3, 2025, titled “AI and the Threat of Shopper Hurt,” now results in an error display screen that claims “Web page not discovered.” In response to the Wayback Machine, that weblog put up 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 unique put up, Khan’s workers had written that the company was “more and more being attentive 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 a spokesperson, declined to remark.
