TALAMANA · THE AI LITERACY MAP FOR ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN · Ethics & Provenance · AGE 18—20 · FACTUAL · EVOLVING

Model cards and terms

A card that names no limitations is a brochure, and a missing field is a finding.

When to use

Before a model enters a real workflow: before the first client upload, the first published image, the first invoice that depends on it. And again when the model updates.

The method

Look for the documents, plural, because they are not always in one place: the model card, where there is one; the system card or technical report; the licence; the acceptable-use policy, where the use restrictions often live; and the privacy or data terms. On Hugging Face the model card is the README of the model's page; for commercial products it sits inside the documentation, in different shapes. Some widely used models have no card worth the name — if so, that is the first line of your summary, and it changes what you may trust the model for. Read four things. Intended use and limitations: what the makers say it is for and where it fails. Training data: what they name, and what they decline to name. Evaluation: what it was tested on, and whether that resembles your work. Licence and terms: what you may do with outputs — commercial use, attribution, prohibited uses — and what the provider may do with your inputs. Write a five-line summary in the studio's own words and file it with the project. Where a field is missing, write "not stated". That is a finding.

Watch for this

A card that is long and says nothing. Marketing pages and model cards can look alike. The test is whether it is specific: does it name datasets, give numbers, list failures? A card that names no limitations is a brochure.

Try it

Open the card for one open-weight model and one commercial model you use. Fill the four fields for each. Count the "not stated" entries. Then find the single sentence in each that matters most to a design studio — usually in the limitations or the terms.

Prove it

Produce a filed one-page reading of one model's card and terms, with the four fields, every "not stated" marked, and the one clause that would change how the studio uses it.

How it works

The model card as a form was proposed in 2018 by Margaret Mitchell and colleagues, as a standard way to report intended use, evaluation across groups, and limits. Hugging Face made it the default README of every model repository, with machine-readable fields for licence and datasets. Commercial providers publish less, in different shapes; many cards name categories of training data rather than an inventory; some use restrictions live only in an acceptable-use policy; and terms of service change even when the model does not. Where something you need is not disclosed, "not stated" is the finding — that is provenance literacy, and it is the sentence the filed summary most often turns on. That is why this card is EVOLVING: the habit lasts; the documents keep changing, and sometimes do not exist.

What this idea builds on

What this idea opens up

Sources

Open this idea on the map · The complete map · Logika · RBDS AI Lab, India · revised every edition.

Age grows from 11 at the centre to 22 at the edge, and six sectors show the learning strands. Tab into the map and the arrow keys step from idea to idea, following the links where there is one. Enter opens the idea under the cursor, and E reads out its links and the reason recorded on each. Press slash for Search, question mark for the full key list, and Escape to leave. Open Ideas for the complete readable list, including what each idea builds on and what it opens up.

LOGIKA · RBDS AI LAB INDIA
ON-RAMP · AGE 11 · FIRST ENCOUNTERS, NOT GATES — IDEAS · — DEPENDENCIES
DONE
OPENS NEXT
SOLID — STANDS ON