The logo for Hugging Face, an open-source artificial intelligence company.
Courtesy of Hugging Face

A recent memo from inside Google suggested that despite investing billions into AI research, the company and its big-name competitors were falling behind: “While we’ve been squabbling, a third faction has been quietly eating our lunch.” That faction is the open-source community, an amorphous group working on AI in decentralized collaboration. One of its key institutions is Hugging Face, a platform for sharing data, connecting to powerful supercomputers, and hosting AI apps; 100,000 new AI models have been uploaded to its systems in the past six months. “The biggest risk,” says CEO Clement Delangue, “is to have power and understanding controlled and concentrated in the hands of a few.”

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Write to Billy Perrigo at billy.perrigo@time.com.

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