Our Open Approach to Tracing AI

The benefits of Generative AI are real and evolving. Businesses and people can level up their game by saving time, accessing expertise, finding new ideas, and expressing creativity across new mediums. I find it very exciting to be in IT right now, as we get to not just experience, but also drive ourselves the impact of computing as a utility in our world. Just imagine when everyone has access to a Jarvis-like assistant as Tony Stark does in the Avengers!

Having access to billions of inputs in a dynamic platform is life changing – however, it is increasingly clear that knowing the source of those billions of inputs is just as important. In order for AI to fully reach maturity, it needs to be clear to people who use it where information and output generated by AI come from, and what inherited burdens exist, so it can be used with confidence. Traceability, security by design and accountability are vital to help organizations manage those risks. 

Open source & AI

Open source is obviously a natural partner and platform to help solve many of these issues. A recent Deep Dive: AI report from the Open Source Initiative (OSI) highlights three crucial areas of AI policy setting that would benefit from being driven by the open source perspective and ethos: open data sets, regulatory guardrails and legal frameworks for ethical AI. To me this means community led development, engagement and rule-setting; collaborative working and problem-solving. How these could interface with AI will be some of the many areas of discussion at the EU Open Source Policy Summit in Brussels this week – where SUSE will have a presence, participating in the discussion.

Our customers are already grappling with what to do with AI – and equally what not to do. For example – how to incorporate AI into high performance workloads while preserving quality and efficiency. How to run AI on open source, and how to incorporate Open Source into AI environments. How to make the most of the benefits of AI while keeping legal security and certainty, in as transparent a way as possible. This will be particularly vital as legislative attention on AI increases globally, and which we anticipate will result in regulation requiring traceability and accountability for GenAI outputs.  

SUSE’s approach

These are questions we too are therefore trying to answer. We are of course like countless other organizations a beneficiary of AI technology, but we also have a more specific role to play here too. We’re heavily invested into the development of open source policy as a leading and long time vendor of open source technology to enterprise. We are committed to contributing to the development of community-based standards for safe, secure use of generative AI in commercial products. Our customers expect us to continuously balance innovation, usability and security in the products and services we provide.  The approach to AI is no different.  As such, we’re currently testing generative AI tools in controlled environments to help us assess how we can deploy them safely on an enterprise basis. 

Our customers are also looking to us to balance automation capabilities with the huge continuing value in human capital. Whilst there is undoubtedly great potential in the capabilities of AI, at SUSE, we want to harness and leverage that capability whilst continuing to invest in, and maximize, the depth of skill and expertise of our people. For us, we see great benefit in developing the potential of AI and our people in a complementary way. 

We will use the outcomes of our ongoing testing with AI to inform both how we operate as a company, and to pass on the benefit of our experiences to customers to help them navigate this new reality.We’re already seeing quite a variety in cost/benefit/risk across differing use cases. Guiding the broader development community on when to use AI, and equally when not to use AI, will be critical. 

As an open source organization that is part of a wider ecosystem, we want to be transparent in how we participate. For over 30 years, our customers have been able to benefit from the rapid pace of innovation in open source without having had to take on the risk and burden of trying to do this themselves. We’ll continue to help our customers embrace the rewards and navigate the risks of this latest milestone in that journey – AI. 

How about you?

This is our approach – I’m keen to hear how you are exploring AI use cases in open source. Do reach out to start a conversation.