Why Open Source Is Instrumental for Development and Advancement of AI
With ever-rising advancements in artificial intelligence technology worldwide, there has been exponential growth in AI funding in the last few years. Considering the growing number of AI startups founded recently, this comes as no surprise. A recent study from Stanford University suggests that there has been a whopping 14-fold increase in the number of AI startups since 2000. Open-source AI is instrumental in this growth.
As a result, there is an increased number of technology companies joining the AI bandwagon that are investing in AI development. However, what’s noteworthy here is that these companies are open sourcing their AI research. Utilizing an open source approach enables their developers to create and improve AI & Machine Learning (ML) algorithms much faster.
So much so that it has become a fundamental part of enabling rapid, secure, and reliable development in the AI space. In this blog, we explore the reason behind all this hype around AI as a platform, open-source AI and why this approach is important for both businesses and developers.it
What Is Open-source Intelligence?
Open-source intelligence is essentially the information and data that is publicly available and can be used to protect businesses and employees, prioritize tasks and solve security issues.
Such is the popularity of the open-source approach for an organization’s enterprise infrastructure strategy. In fact, more than 75 percent of the 950 IT leaders interviewed worldwide for Red Hat’s latest 2020 State of Enterprise Open Source Report confirmed that enterprise open source is significant. Red Hat is the golden standard of software companies that have built a successful business around this approach.
The key highlight of open source AI solutions for business is that it supports global collaboration by allowing the most progressive minds in technology to collaborate and design solutions.
Wondering what the other benefits that enterprises can get from following an open-source approach are? Read on to know more.
Benefits Of Open Source For Developers And Businesses
Using an open-source platform for AI comes with its own set of benefits that can impact the acceleration in AI development. Some of these are discussed below-
- Speed & Agility
One of the advantages of open source is that it enables faster development speed and faster time to market. What it provides here is a beginning point of tested and proven resources, and agile processes that deliver quality software quickly.
Further, proprietary solutions often release slowly, or else force their customers to follow their release and feature cycle. In contrast to this, in open source, if you need a feature quickly, your own team can extend the software or push changes back into the code base so that it is available immediately.
This allows businesses to get the advantage of agility, flexibility and a quick start in order to mature to a large scale, enterprise-grade implementation.
- Low-cost Development
Another advantage of open-source AI systems is that they involve zero licensing fees. This is especially beneficial for computer vision companies or people with little or no experience in IT infrastructure.
However, it is important to remember that open-source AI may come with other hidden costs similar to commercial software, such as maintenance cost, training, and implementation costs.
The good news is that open-source AI can also reduce these costs. These are usually cross-platform applications and can be easily deployed and integrated into multiple operating systems, thus reducing their training and implementation costs.
- Promotes Diverse Ideas
Several developers can find great application ideas but cannot necessarily code to build those applications. Open-source AI promotes a maker culture that gives organizations more freedom to innovate with AI as a platform. It enables every developer or business to take necessary guidance and assistance from other experts to reach their goal.
If a developer gets stuck due to a bug in the coding, another developer from the community can help him remove that bug from the code. This allows for the innovation of new and diverse systems constantly.
Last Thoughts
The advantages that embracing an open-source AI approach can bring are immense and well documented. It enables developers and enterprises to eradicate various potential barriers such as skills shortage or high licensing fees and allows them to solely focus on developing exciting yet secure/ easy-to-deploy AI solutions.
If you’re also interested in joining the open-source AI revolution, collaborate with Kami Vision today. Our vision AI solutions can be leveraged across industries and help you optimize your operations. We’re here to assist you in developing and deploying robust yet creative solutions.
