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 through which she positioned herself as an advocate for open supply synthetic intelligence.
The occasion befell as California lawmakers have 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 will 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 out there to them, “smaller gamers can convey 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 a wide range of totally different traits. The authors as a substitute urged adopting the time period “open-weight,” which 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 submit, two sources conversant in 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 Expertise.
One other submit 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 Expertise touchdown web page. In line with the Wayback Machine, the redirect occurred in late August of this 12 months.
A 3rd FTC submit about AI that was authored by Khan’s employees and printed on January 3, 2025, titled “AI and the Danger of Client Hurt,” now results in an error display screen that claims “Web page not discovered.” In line with the Wayback Machine, that weblog submit was nonetheless dwell on the FTC’s web site as of August 12, however by August 15 it had been faraway from the web. Within the unique submit, Khan’s employees had written that the company was “more and more being attentive to AI’s potential for real-world cases of hurt—from incentivizing industrial surveillance to enabling fraud and impersonation to perpetuating unlawful discrimination.”
It’s not clear why the weblog posts have been faraway from the web. An FTC spokesperson didn’t reply to a request for remark. Khan, by a spokesperson, declined to remark.
