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According to Mr. Alexandre Zapolsky, an Open Source expert in Europe, Open Source AI helps protect digital sovereignty and is the direction Vietnamese developers should follow.

Alexander Zapolsky is the founder of LINAGORA, a leading software developer in France specializing in building Open Source solutions, with a team of about 30 people in Vietnam. During his trip to Hanoi, he shared about the importance of open-source, especially in developing AI-driven products.

Alexandre Zapolsky, founder of the Open Source software company LINAGORA

How do you evaluate the application of Open Source in Vietnam and France?

I notice a difference in the level of acceptance of open source between the two countries. In France, it is more robust, with many companies and the government using open source products. French President Emmanuel Macron has repeatedly voiced his support for open source at technology events.

In Vietnam, the level of acceptance is lower, but there are many start-ups involved. The young generation in Vietnam is large, with many aspiring to become engineers, develop careers, and become developers and programmers. Nowadays, if you are a software developer, you should be interested in open source.

At the national level, I think both France and Vietnam need open source strategies. I have been heavily involved in promoting the French government's development of such a strategy. Vietnam should also make strategic decisions regarding open source and digital sovereignty.

You mentioned digital sovereignty. What is it, and why does Open Source contribute to digital sovereignty?

Digital sovereignty can be understood as the ability to manage your digital dependencies, or your organization's dependencies, with software providers. If you rely on proprietary, non-open-source software or solutions from international providers, you may be at risk. A geopolitical change could leave you without access to your own IT systems. We cannot achieve digital sovereignty without mastering technology.

And with the design principles of open-source, you are not only more accessible but also completely independent, not dependent on any specific software provider, from any country.

This is especially true for artificial intelligence as it stands today. The most important thing in large language models and AI is data. For proprietary language models, the datasets they use are not published. They train those datasets in their own way. In such cases, the users won't be able to control the input and output data. This poses a significant risk as it could lead to dependence on the vision of an individual or company. The most evident risk is that AI could generate an answer that is not aligned with your control, with the politics, and culture of your country.

Furthermore, I believe that AI must respect diversity. In nature, we need biodiversity, and the digital world should be no different. We shouldn't have just one or a few AI models. We need a diverse array of AI models, and that's precisely what Open Source LLM aims to offer to the world.

Despite such benefits, the most successful companies still tend to be closed-source. What challenges exist in adopting Open Source solutions?

I'd like to mention OpenAI. It's a shame that they're called 'Open AI' but their technology is closed-source. However, I don't think that the ultimate winner in the future will be OpenAI, but rather a company that uses open-source. A truly open-source AI company will be the leader in the market.

In the tech market in general, I believe that the dominance of the GAFAM tech giants (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) comes partly from their financial strength. They can create barriers in the tech market, making it more difficult for open-source to compete.

open-source may be easily accessible to developers, but promoting and persuading users to adopt open-source solutions require significant budgets or resources. Currently, the market capitalization of GAFAM may exceed that of France's budget. However, despite such significant challenges, there is a growing recognition that open-source benefits the globe, individuals, and society as a whole.The popularity of open-source is increasing, especially among the younger generation, who are increasingly inclined to use and promote open-source solutions over proprietary ones. I believe we are still in the early stages of this journey, and the world will continue to move towards greater acceptance of open-source.

So, what have European countries done to protect digital sovereignty, and what advice do you have for Vietnam in this regard?

In Europe, 80% of the software market is provided by companies from the US. That's a huge figure, and it's about time we realized 'enough is enough,' we can't always be prey. From there, we've been more determined to protect our interests.

To achieve that, you need to develop your core digital infrastructure based on open-source platforms. The pillars of digital technology infrastructure, such as operating systems, management tools, data processing... need to be built on open-source.We've developed an initiative called the 'Digital Public Infrastructure,' and they're built on open standards with open-source software tools.

And I believe that every nation should have the ability to manage its own infrastructure, without relying on any other country. In Vietnam, I have seen some companies that are very successful in building digital sovereignty, such as VNPT and Viettel. They use open technologies with the assistance of international experts and organizations, and they are completely independent in their technology infrastructure.

Moreover, I believe that Vietnam should develop research and development funding programs to support the development and growth of locally produced software on a larger scale in Vietnam.

So what about the development of open-source AI in Vietnam?

The more companies develop based on open-source, the fewer monopolies there will be. So, what I think is that you need to be ready to make open-source LLM. When this platform is good enough and accepted by developers, opening up technology will be much easier.

Even in large companies mentioned above, like Meta, they have started using open-source in large language models LLama 1, LLama 2 to compete with OpenAI. Elon Musk also decided to make Grok AI an open-source LLM. So, if you don't make your LLM open-source, you might lag behind the world.

I believe the solution for Vietnam lies in 'Le saut de grenouille', or Leap Frog. In essence, this means avoiding competition by following the path of others and instead, taking a leap forward to the next frontier. This frontier lies in the direct development of a truly open-source LLM model.

You can access the whole article in Vietnamese here: https://vnexpress.net/chuyen-gia-phap-viet-nam-nen-dung-ma-nguon-mo-cho-ai-4735193.html