Open Source AI Tools

The open-source AI ecosystem offers alternatives to proprietary platforms, enabling researchers and educators to work with cutting-edge AI technologies without vendor lock-in or usage restrictions. While these tools are not Yale supported and FERPA compliant, they do provide transparency, customization, and cost-effective solutions for machine learning projects. 

Open Source Repositories

Repository Description Key Features
Hugging Face Hugging Face serves as a central repository for open source machine learning models, datasets, and tools.
  • Model Hub: Over 500,000 pre-trained models spanning natural language processing, computer vision, audio, and multimodal tasks 
  • Transformers Library: Easy-to-use Python library for implementing transformer models with just a few lines of code 
  • Spaces: Interactive demos and free-to-use applications built with Gradio or Streamlit 
  • Datasets: Curated collection of datasets for training and evaluation 
Kaggle Kaggle provides the world’s largest repository of open datasets alongside a collaborative platform for data science learning and competition.
  • Datasets: Over 50,000 public datasets covering domains from healthcare to finance 
  • Notebooks: Code examples and tutorials using real-world data 
  • Courses: Free micro-courses on data science and machine learning fundamentals 

Small Language Models for Local Deployment

Efficient smaller models can run on personal computers, offering privacy, cost, and environmental benefits. For example, gpt-oss, OpenAI’s “open weight language models” will run on many laptops.  

  • Ollama - Run large language models locally with simple commands
  • LocalAI - Self-hosted OpenAI-compatible API 

These open-source tools enable educators and students to experiment with AI technologies while maintaining control over their data and computational resources. Open source and smaller models allow greater transparency before you scale to larger, more resource-intensive applications.

AI Tools Topics

Explore our resources to learn more.

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