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The main topic – AI is not software anymore. What is open-source for AI, and what are Open AI’s Four Freedoms?
By open AI here, I mean really open AI – not the company. But it's actually Sam Altman who got me thinking about freedoms of open AI.
Look at this picture. On the right side (from right to left), there’s Paul Graham, Sam Altman, and next to him, in a grey t-shirt, smiling – Aaron Swartz.
Image Credit: Flaming Hydra
Aaron Swartz was famous for fighting for freedom of information. He helped develop the RSS standard and worked with Creative Commons, all fueled by the belief that information – especially taxpayer-funded research – should belong to everyone. In 2010, convinced that academic paywalls stifled progress, Swartz downloaded millions of scholarly papers from JSTOR, accessing them through MIT’s network. Though his motivation was rooted in the principle of free access, federal authorities hit him with charges that threatened decades in prison.
He couldn't bear it – and in 2013, he took his own life.
In 2015, two years later, Sam Altman co-founded the company with the beautiful name OpenAI. At first, OpenAI looked like a natural heir to Aaron’s crusade for free information. We all know what happened later: proprietary code, restricted access, paywalls, a for-profit structure etc. Recently Sam Altman confessed he might be on the wrong side of history:
Image Credit: AMA at Reddit (which btw Aaron Swartz co-founded)
But what we see now is still the same: him (or OpenAI in general) accusing rivals of doing exactly what his company has done so many times before.
In January 2025, DeepSeek blew everyone’s mind by open-sourcing (“open-weight”, if to be exact) their best model R1, which achieves performance comparable to OpenAI-o1 across math, code, and reasoning tasks. This open-weight vs. open-source debate is not new — we first covered it when Meta released Llama 2 in our weekly digest: FOD#12: Is Llama 2 Really Open Source The tension between open-source AI and safety regulation goes back even further — to August 2023, when a coalition of Hugging Face, GitHub, and EleutherAI pushed back against the EU AI Act. We covered it in FOD#13.
And what did OpenAI do? It alleged that the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek used a technique called "distillation" to replicate its proprietary models without authorization. This crackdown raises questions about double standards in AI training. Critics argue that OpenAI itself trained on vast amounts of web data without permission – yet now seeks to block competitors from using its outputs.
And then we have a manifesto from Dario Amodei at Anthropic, basically arguing that China must be locked out of advanced AI by tightening U.S. chip export controls.
"It is mine, I tell you. My own. My precious. Yes, my precious."
So, it got me thinking: we talk a lot about open-source in AI, but let’s be honest – it’s not the same as for software. In software, open-source wasn’t just about sharing code; it was a philosophy, anchored in the Four Freedoms that redefined how technology is built, owned, and controlled. Real freedom – the kind that shapes entire eras – has never been accidental. It needs a foundation, a structure that makes it real.
AI is at that inflection point now. It doesn’t just need more open models or better licensing – it needs its own philosophy, a set of core freedoms that define how it’s created, shared, and governed. We’re standing at the moment where AI’s version of the Four Freedoms has to be written. The questions are:
What are the Freedoms of Open AI? and How do we establish them before power is consolidated beyond reach, before the “growing influence of the ring” has ruined the bearers?
I’m here to start the conversation, so I suggest six freedoms. Choose ONE that you think is the most important. (You can leave your choice of four main as a comment if you’d like). The explanations of all suggested freedoms, along with the historical context of the "Four Freedoms," are available below the poll.
What is the most important Freedom of AI?
Freedom to Access – Open AI should be available to all, ensuring that research, models, and datasets remain accessible to foster innovation and prevent monopolization.
Freedom to Understand – AI systems should be transparent and interpretable, allowing users to comprehend how decisions are made and avoid black-box dependency.
Freedom to Forget – AI should not be a permanent recorder of human actions. You should have the ability to erase, unlearn, or discard information when necessary – whether for privacy, ethical concerns, or simply to prevent stagnation in learning.
Freedom to Dissolve – AI should integrate seamlessly into human life without dominating or replacing it.
Freedom from Overfitting – AI should not be trapped in static world models that attempt to preempt all possible inputs. Instead, it should maintain adaptability, learning from interactions rather than relying on exhaustive pretraining that inevitably loses relevance.
Freedom from Excess – AI should not be over-trained, over-aligned, or over-regulated to the point that it loses its effectiveness.
Historical background: Four Freedoms
In 1941, when the world was basically on fire, Franklin D. Roosevelt came up with his Four Freedoms:
Freedom of Speech – The right to express opinions without government restraint.
Freedom of Worship – The right to practice any religion (or none) without persecution.
Freedom from Want – Economic security and a decent standard of living for all.
Freedom from Fear – A world free from war and oppression.
Sure, they were American values, but FDR made it clear these rights belonged to everyone, everywhere. For him, it was about protecting the core of human dignity.
His Four Freedoms were baked into his New Deal mindset, which was all about giving citizens both economic security and personal freedoms. He was also staring down Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan – who were all about killing free thought and speech. Roosevelt’s rallying cry shaped the future founding of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, turning his Four Freedoms into a worldwide mission statement.
Fast-forward 45 years, and the fight had moved to the world of software. By the mid-80s, technology was being locked up tighter than a billionaire’s wallet. Corporations controlled how programs were used, shared, or even peeked at. Richard Stallman, a programmer from MIT, didn’t like the new trend of “pay up or shut up,” so in 1985, he launched the Free Software Foundation. As an homage to Roosevelt, Stallman laid out four freedoms of his own:
Freedom 0 – The freedom to run the program for any purpose.
Freedom 1 – The freedom to study how the program works and modify it.
Freedom 2 – The freedom to distribute copies of the program.
Freedom 3 – The freedom to distribute modified versions of the program.
Stallman’s playbook lit the fuse for the open-source movement, birthing Linux and powering everything from servers to smartphones – all while kicking off endless debates about digital rights and online autonomy.
Now, here we are in the age of AI. Big players want to hold the keys to the new digital kingdom. This setup is rife with the potential for fresh flavors of oppression – algorithms we can’t question, never-ending surveillance, AI bias reinforcing old injustices.
If Roosevelt articulated freedoms to guide a post-war world, and Stallman did the same for the digital age, I suggest it’s time to think and define the Freedoms of AI.
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