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Meta's plan to offer free commercial AI models puts pressure on Google, OpenAI
- whelp_24 3y ago[flagged]
- rvz 3y agoGreat move as Meta is also at the finish line in the race to zero and this indeed pressures both Google and O̶p̶e̶n̶AI.com. If you are not at the finish line or in open source, you cannot win the race to zero.
- Havoc 3y agoMust say I'm genuinely thankful for what Meta has done on this front. Without their research release of llama I think things would have been substantially less democratic. This could easily have gone into a "only orgs with billions can play" direction and nobody even trying in the learned helplessness sense. Instead we're ending up in a hybrid "ok maybe can't quite train from scratch but can still tinker" space which is a lot more healthy If they want to double down on that then I applaud them
- kibwen 3y agoWasn't Llama leaked, without Meta's consent?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Havoc 3y agoNope wasn't leaked...somehow media latched on to that wording. Initially it was behind a consent form for research purposes. i.e. Just give some basic deets and you get access to the weights under a non-commercial license. FB shut that down after it got lots of attention. That obvious got copy pasted onto a torrent & grew legs from there. And FB hassled some people DCMA takedowns too but seemed pretty half hearted & was too late at that stage. [Sidequest: I believe the repo they used to distribute access also had a magnetic link in it too at one point which further confused the narrative but not 100% sure on the precise details on this] Point is at no stage was this 100% behind closed doors and someone leaked it as you & I would understand the word in the "stolen" sense.
- edgyquant 3y agoBut as you just said… it was leaked
- JumpCrisscross 3y agoIt was "leaked." They wanted to distribute it. But they couldn't, politically. So it "leaked."
- bick_nyers 3y agoYou can tell by Mark's wording and body language when he talks about it in the recent Lex Fridman episode. I got the impression from him that he would have released it in a manner closer to that of open source if there wasn't a question of legal liability.
- IshKebab 3y agoWhy couldn't they distribute it? They clearly could have. There's no law against it. Perhaps you meant that they were nervous about companies using it commercially and either bringing them bad press or making money off their work? That's clearly why they only released it for researchers.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> Why couldn't they distribute it? No legal issues per se. Hence the political qualifier. See: https://www.menendez.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/letter_to_meta_on_cryptocurrency_scams.pdf https://www.menendez.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/letter_to_meta...
- elcomet 3y agoIt was trained on data they don't own. They could face a lawsuit for this, like it has happened for image generation models.
- Havoc 3y agoIf you want to consider filling in a form and downloading it a "leak" then yeah it was leaked. I wouldn't call it that but semantics I guess
- ren_engineer 3y agoat best it's an example of "Commoditize your complements" by cutting OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google at the knees in their attempt to make much profit off AI - https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ Facebook isn't doing this out of the kindness of their hearts, it just makes business sense for them to do it. AI seems to be in a smiling curve situation right now, where only Nvidia on the hardware side and the consumer facing products using AI as a feature are making money. The companies training the models and trying to sell the API seem like they'll have a hard time not being replaceable commodities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiling_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiling_curve
- redbell 3y ago> Facebook isn't doing this out of the kindness of their hearts Personally, I don't care if they had a plan to profit from this move as long as it brings value for the public, it's a win-win action.
- getcrunk 3y agoSure it is not benevolent. But fuck do I love them for it right now. It’s better for all of us. And it took the game to a whole new level.
- el_nahual 3y agoI don't think this is a case of "commoditize your complements." What's the complement to AI that meta owns? I think it's more of a case of "commoditize your competitors".
- spacebanana7 3y agoHe’s also got tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions of dollars worth of free labour from AI researchers working to make his models better.
- humanistbot 3y ago> What's the complement to AI that meta owns? - Platforms where users can interact with AI agents - Extensive user and content data that can be used to fine tune large foundation models
- stephc_int13 3y agoIs this the beginning of a vilain redempion arc for Zuck?
- gautamdivgi 3y agoMeta has always been a big open source contributor. We use their prophet model for forecasting extensively. Their quality of open source has always been good for the things I’ve used.
- sheepscreek 3y agoDoes anyone remember Facebook M? I believe that was their first big foray into creating an intelligent chatbot/personal assistant. Although that may not have anything to do with LLaMA directly - it’s still pretty cool to see that a crazy vision like that is so close to becoming reality. I am genuinely excited about the positive impacts LLMs and their future derivatives can have in computing. We can now, for the first time, truly “program” a computer in natural language. It’s even intelligent enough to “fill in the gaps” using general intelligence. Just don’t rely on it for any niche topics without teaching it a thing or two, or you’ll get bull crap back.
- miohtama 3y agoIt's not only free as in beer, but free as in libre, open source models. Let's hope it will play for AI is it played for operating systems with Linux.
- techwizrd 3y agoHonestly, this is really wonderful news from Meta. I'm sufficiently impressed.
- ignoramous 3y ago> It's not only free as in beer, but free as in libre If by it you mean LLaMA 1, then I don't think per the license one can use it for commercial projects. So, it isn't really libre. That said, all indications are that LLaMA 2 would be fully FLOSS. If you meant OPT, it isn't libre either: https://github.com/facebookresearch/metaseq/blob/main/projects/OPT/MODEL_LICENSE.md https://github.com/facebookresearch/metaseq/blob/main/projec...
- whimsicalism 3y agoLooks like the UAE has beat them to the chase. Never thought I'd be thanking the Emirate for anything, but they did it.
- GreedClarifies 3y agoIndeed. What the UAE did with Falcon was inspiring, well done! This is something that more governments could do.
- version_five 3y agoGiven the choice between equal models from Meta and the group that released Falcon, initially with a super shady royalty license that they then open sourced, and that nobody had ever heard of before, I'd personally go for meta. Of course, variety is good and I hope the UAE group continues to establish themselves as a credible model provider.
- whimsicalism 3y agoI don't really care what license it was originally released on nor do I care if they have been heard of before.
- danielcampos93 3y agoSee. When you have to convince corporate lawyers and security folks that whole switching licenses makes them uneasy. BD and legal are much happier to deal with Meta than the UAE.
- Zuiii 3y agoThis argument makes no sense. People relicense software all the time and the lawyers are usually fine with it (especially when the terms are more favorable). What am I missing here?
- csomar 3y agoI am not sure if you have been to the UAE. I’d probably prefer to deal with them than Meta or any other US corporation.
- vosper 3y agoThis is strategic, right? It kicks Google, a competitor for advertising dollars. Some people feel Google is under existential threat from AI (trawling through search results full of spam and ads sucks when an AI can just tell you the answer), by allowing people to build various forms of Google competitor without doing the hard lifting of creating the LLM. It kicks OpenAI, too, though Microsoft is perhaps less obviously a competitor to Meta right now. But Microsoft has OpenAI, loads of money, loads of engineers, and lots of product lines, so they might leverage OpenAI's tech lead to _become_ more of a competitor to Meta. It's less of a risk to Meta if OpenAI doesn't have a tech lead anymore.
- dpflan 3y agoIt is certainly strategic to make their AI the most accessible platform for building with AI. Plus the reach of their social networks can put AI improvements that are made elsewhere into their own models and then into their software and to end users. If company A finds a way to use Model X, then that is more easily usable by Meta — they know the model quite well I would assume. Meta’s business thrives on free usage by billions of users, it needs people to keep using its platform to survive, and not leave the networks. Maybe Google is the nearest competitor in terms of ads business being so financially vital.
- DebtDeflation 3y agoThis is aimed squarely at OpenAI (and to a much lesser degree, Anthropic). Google is their own worst enemy in this space precisely because they are terrified of doing anything that will cannibalize their search business and the ad market built around it.
- anon373839 3y agoIt also makes Meta more attractive for top research talent, because researchers _really_ like to publish and get credit for their work. As OpenAI and others batten down the hatches, this could give Meta an advantage.
- stereolambda 3y agoIf so, it sounds interestingly similar to 1980s-90s IBM and its approach towards personal computers.
- subarctic 3y agoLooks like the original article is here[0], but it's behind a paywall [0]: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/meta-wants-companies-to-make-money-off-its-open-source-ai-in-challenge-to-google https://www.theinformation.com/articles/meta-wants-companies...
- ldjkfkdsjnv 3y agoPretty clear they will open source as much as they can to kill off would be competitors.
- ilaksh 3y agoIs there any information about when the model will be available or what it is capable of? Anything like a position on a leaderboard or a score related to reasoning or code generation? Will it be able to run on AMD's new MI300X? I keep hoping that will put a "chip" in Nvidia's dominance since it seems more efficient.
- alexcombessie 3y agoI am not sure businesses would trust Meta with their sensitive data. Facebook/Meta brand equity in the B2B domain is severely tarnished, with their long history of lack of respect to data privacy laws and lack of transparency. I just don’t see how Meta could possibly turn into a success in the B2B software business. They are a great advertising company, but they’ve never been successful in their other ventures…
- xnzakg 3y agoHonestly this feels like a good reason for them to open source it. You trust the local model and may try using it instead of one of their competitors like OpenAI. If they took LLAMA in the state they released it in and hosted inference, nobody would use it due to the lower quality and data privacy issues.
- smashah 3y agoCool now Meta please sending Cease & Desist threats to 15 year old OSS devs thanks
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoFirst hit is always free. Don’t forget what your dealing with here: The faceless, amoral, infinitely ravenous, maw of the most efficient personal data succubus in history. Make no mistake this is something like “goodwill capture” instead of “regulatory capture.” I see no way that this diminishes Meta’s power in any way - arguably it strengthens it by making it easier to choose a Meta architecture instead of creating a competing FOSS architecture. So arguably all this does is raise the FOSS bar technically further entrench Meta - AND with the most important thing, having thousands of developers prime their data architectures for Meta models to eventually serve from a Meta account. And once it’s widespread enough to lock you in, those commercial terms, whoops they changed!
- ancientworldnow 3y agoAs opposed to simply being locked into openai api's as the only option?
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoA false dilemma, also referred to as false dichotomy or false binary, is an informal fallacy based on a premise that erroneously limits what options are available.[1] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
- JumpCrisscross 3y agoThese models cost millions to train. The only reason open-source LLMs have a heartbeat is they’re standing on Meta’s weights. The only third path is a public option.
- LoganDark 3y ago> The only reason open-source LLMs have a heartbeat is they’re standing on Meta’s weights. Not necessarily. RWKV, for example, is a different architecture that wasn't based on Facebook's weights whatsoever. I don't know where BlinkDL (the author) got the training data, but they seem to have done everything mostly independently otherwise. https://github.com/BlinkDL/RWKV-LM https://github.com/BlinkDL/RWKV-LM disclaimer: I've been doing a lot of work lately on an implementation of CPU inference for this model, so I'm obviously somewhat biased since this is the model I have the most experience in.
- elzbardico 3y agoI have to confess that I never felt very comfortable with the prospect of Microsoft dominating the AI era. This is good news to me.
- Disha113 3y ago[flagged]
- jart 3y agoI love Meta. I thought they had turned to the dark side for the longest time. I've never been so wrong. When Meta released LLaMA it changed my life. I've never seen a company move more leverage to the edge at once. They must be taking notice of how much it's made folks like me adore them. So now we're getting commercial friendly models too? I didn't know Christmas could come twice in one year.
- ranguna 3y agoMeta is so big that I'm not even sure it's valid to refer to them as a whole. What I like in this context is Meta's ML research department, but to me, Meta as a whole is still the same old privacy violating, dopamine inducing, teenage deprecion and suicide causing company I've alway known. So probably best to not mix the waters.
- elcomet 3y agoHow did it change your life?
- jart 3y agoWhen LLaMA came out, I dropped everything I was doing to work on it. It's given me new hope for technological progress. Think about it. What were people focusing on before LLMs came out? The frontiers in software were cryptocurrency and wasm. Now we have something I can believe in and thanks to Facebook I'm able to actually use it on my own. I also got to feel like I was a part of its development when I changed llama.cpp to reduce its memory use by 2x and enable running multiple models in parallel.
- wkat4242 3y agoNice, I hope more models like Llama will make it to the community. Though I wouldn't mind crowdfunding one either and have it truly open and free though.