FOSS Backstage 2024

What the AI revolution means for Open Source and our society
2024-03-05 , Stage Auditorium

This talk will discuss the current challenges around AI. In the second half it covers the new innovative local and open source AI features that the Nextcloud community is building. At the end the talk looks into the new Ethical AI framework and what it means for existing SaaS AI solutions


In the last year we saw the rise of AI systems like ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, Dall-E and others. Large Language Models like GPT are enabling a lot of new innovative features and products which will revolutionise the world.
But this large autoregressive language models come with a lot of challenges that can have negative effects on the Open Source and Open Tech community. For example it’s unclear if in the future everyone will have access to the same ML models and training data. Can students, startups and open source people build innovative new products using AI in the same way the open source communities build Open Code and Open Tech. How can we make sure that the AI system are not discriminating underrepresented minorities? What is the energy consumption and CO2 emissions of this new big AI systems?
This talk will discuss the current challenges around AI. In the second half it covers the new innovative local and open source AI features that the Nextcloud community is building. At the end the talk looks into the new Ethical AI framework and what it means for existing SaaS AI solutions and the open source local alternatives. It also covers the ongoing discussion to define an Open Source AI definition in the OSI community.

Frank Karlitschek is a long time open source contributor and former board member of the KDE e.V. He founded ownCloud in 2010 and the successor Nextcloud in 2016 to create a fully open source and decentralised alternative to big centralized cloud companies. Frank was an invited expert at the W3C to help to create the ActivityPub standard. Frank has spoken at MIT, CERN, Harvard and ETH and keynoted LinuxCon, Latinoware, FOSSASIA, Campus Party and many other conferences. Frank is the founder and CEO of Nextcloud GmbH. He is also a fellow of Open Forum Europe and an advisor to the United Nations regarding Open Source.