Free Information to Everyone

There is the preconceived notion that, everyone should have the right to information. “How much information?” is a debatable topic. While the availability of information provides more transparency and helps fight corruption, deception, and malpractices. However, wrong people using the same information can bring the whole system down. Hence the idea of free information is a slippery slope.

Firstly, it is essential to release important information, by organizations to increase the transparency of their processes. By providing transparency, people can participate proactively and give their best work inside or related to the organization. Also, this transparency helps to keep a check at various steps of the process. Discrepancies and malpractices are easily identifiable in transparent systems. Democracy over Monarchy is a great example of providing transparency to each individual.

However, the same democracy comes with its drawback. There are too many stakeholders in the process that interrupt at every step, making the process very slow. Providing too much transparency can be proven harmful. Such especially is the case for Government, Military, and Research Organisations. Critical information can be easily exploited by groups like terrorists and hackers to bring down the whole organization or even worse the nation.

OpenAI after creating its state-of-the-art GPT3 did not open source the main version, while Tesla open-sourced its design and patents of electric cars for the use of other companies. Ironically, both companies are owned by Elon Musk, yet the choices differ. This is a prime example of the selectivity of disclosure of information. While Musk wanted to open source electric car technology to promote it, however, he didn’t want the wrong groups to get hold of GPT3 which can prove dangerous to generate real-sounding text.

We need to be very careful with the information we share. Neither restricting too much nor releasing too much information is the best balance that we should yearn toward. This principle is useful not just in nations or organizations, but in our personal lives as well.