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title: README
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This is a community of researchers from different countries and institutions interested in studying the emerging open-source AI ecosystem.

We believe that a diverse and inclusive community leads to more robust and impactful research in open-source AI. We welcome contributors with diverse backgrounds and skills.

Learn more about our areas of interest below and join us to uncover the activity and impact of different initiatives focused on openness in AI.

Research Projects

✅ Quantitative Analysis of Hugging Face Hub

- Using activity data from Hugging Face Hub datasets, models and spaces, we ran a three-part quantitative analysis of development activity, finding that: - activity is extremely imbalanced between repositories; with over 70% of models having 0 downloads, while 1% accounting for 99% of downloads - the community has a core-periphery structure, with a core of prolific developers while the large majority (89%) of developers are "islands", primarily working alone. - Link to Paper: [The AI Community Building the Future? A Quantitative Analysis of Development Activity on Hugging Face Hub](https://huggingface.co/papers/2405.13058)

🚧 Model Tree Lineages from Base Models to Derived Models

We are looking into what kinds of downstream activity are most prevalent for different kinds of foundation models. What kinds of derivations (e.g. fine tuning, quantizing) are most popular?

🚧 Cartography of Collaboration in the Open Source AI Ecosystem

We are investigating how open source AI artefacts such as open datasets and open-weight models are built and who contributes to this process across the model building pipeline, including during the pre-release and post-release phases.
Our research aims to map collaboration practices from pre-release to post-release across diverse organisational contexts, including individuals, grassroots initiatives, research institutes, startups, and large technology companies, and geographies.

Open to collaboration!

Interested in open-source AI research?

We welcome researchers at all levels of experience. Here's how to get involved:

Discuss ideas: Share your thoughts and connect with other researchers on our community page.
Join the organization: If you're actively working on projects related to open-source AI, we encourage you to join our organization.