Economic benefits of open foundation models

Estimating the benefits of open foundation models in AI

To inform the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration consultation on “Dual Use Foundation Artificial Intelligence Models With Widely Available Model Weights”, this study estimates the benefits of a ‘diverse’ generative AI ecosystem, where both open and closed foundation models exist and are available to access, against the counterfactual of a ‘restricted’ ecosystem where only closed foundation models are available.

Open foundation models could support faster adoption of generative AI amongst US businesses and provide an additional $1.5 trillion in benefits for them in 2035

The transparency, competition and innovation supported by open foundation models could accelerate the adoption of generative AI by US businesses in 2035

Open models allow developers to access, deploy, and modify the model… which has played a key role in growing developer activity in generative AI

Open foundation models support transparency, competition and innovation, and are likely to drive higher adoption of generative AI across the US economy.

Open model weights allows researchers and authorities to inspect, test, modify and deploy models independently. US IT professionals recognize the security benefits of open source - 90% of US IT executives believe enterprise open source is as secure or more secure than proprietary software.

As seen with other technologies, open sourcing puts downward pressure on costs and gives businesses greater flexibility and choice. The top reason businesses use open source software is its cost competitiveness.

Publishing model weights enables developers to collaborate on fine tuning and crowdsource better, safer models. The number of third-party variant models publicly released to date is over 70,000.

We modeled likely adoption curves for generative AI across the two scenarios: diverse and restricted.

In a diverse future generative AI ecosystem, there are highly-capable open and closed foundation models (similar to the current state). In this scenario, 88% of US businesses adopt foundation models.

In a restricted future generative AI ecosystem, government regulation or other competitive dynamics results in predominantly closed foundation models. In this scenario, 55% of US businesses adopt Generative AI foundation models.

Read the report here.