A new organization called the Open Source AI Foundation has launched a $10 million ad campaign that aims to “convince [US] lawmakers that civilian agencies should abandon work with closed source AI companies and adopt open source technologies instead”:

“All closed-source AI contracts with civilian agencies should be terminated immediately. Government AI should be built openly, with transparency and auditability at its core,” Joe Merrill, CEO of OpenTeams, said in a statement. “This allows the models and training to be publicly scrutinized and verified.”

It remains to be seen how impactful this organization’s efforts will be. It has yet to gain the backing of any major tech companies, and the notoriety of its founder Brittany Kaiser from her involvement in the Cambridge Analytica scandal could give many would-be supporters pause.

But at the very least, this development is yet another sign of the momentum in favor of open source AI. In most countries (including the United States), the government is both the largest employer and the biggest customer of enterprise software. If government agencies begin enacting policies that favor open source AI technologies over their closed source counterparts, that is likely to have a ripple effect across the technology landscape. And the rising tide from that ripple effect will lift every boat in the sea of COSS.