How transparent are AI models? Stanford researchers found out.

Sharon Goldman writes for VentureBeat about a new Stanford study that assesses how different, commercially available, foundational models fare in terms of transparency.

Stanford University’s Center for Research on Foundation Models (CRFM) took a big swing on evaluating the transparency of a variety of AI large language models (that they call foundation models). It released a new Foundation Model Transparency Index to address the fact that while AI’s societal impact is rising, the public transparency of LLMs is falling — which is necessary for public accountability, scientific innovation and effective governance.

The Index results were sobering: No major foundation model developer was close to providing adequate transparency, according to the researchers — the highest overall score was 54% — revealing a fundamental lack of transparency in the AI industry. Open models led the way, with Meta’s Llama 2 and Hugging Face’s BloomZ getting the highest scores. But a proprietary model, OpenAI’s GPT-4, came in third — ahead of Stability’s Stable Diffusion.

Please click on this link to read the full article.

Also, the original paper for the Foundational Model Transparency Index can be found here.

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