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Funny how both OpenAI and now Hugging Face promise “openness” for their AI tools so that they’re “accessible to everyone” and then both partner with big tech co

Funny how both OpenAI and now Hugging Face promise “openness” for their AI tools so that they’re “accessible to everyone” and then both partner with big tech companies who are trying to control and monetize as much as they can.

zitterbewegung 4y ago
Huggingface started off as GitHub for machine learning and anyone can download the models there. OpenAI has everything behind a black box where you don’t exactly know what actually happening. Then to monetize they host the models you want to use at a cost which would be a good investment for Amazon but you can still self host using their libraries.
enoreyes 4y ago
Hugging Face internally has a lot of very strong believers (including the exec team) in open source + decentralized approach towards AI as the only safe and productive way forward. HF is ostensibly the only place to find deep+broad resources for open source DL and transformers/diffusers are the libraries du jour of open DL. Compute is really important for AI, and having a cloud provider align themselves with an organization which is genuinely trying to be "Open" AI is I think a positive step forward.
- RosanaAnaDana 4y ago
  Leadership is fungible,everyone has a price, and words are innevitably wind. I would consider this a solid step in the direction agaisnt why huggingface is actually useful.
  - enoreyes 4y ago
    Not disagreeing with your first point, but as I see it - this only enables HF to continue to spend money on making good open source tooling + doing research on open alternatives to closed source LLMs (something sorely needed), while opening them up to more enterprise customers who primarily use AWS. FWIW I am an ML engineer there (maybe should have disclosed earlier) and I feel pretty optimistic about the opportunities this will enable for the open source community. Maybe with the visibility into the closed door discussions I have a more positive attitude, or maybe I'm being naive. Time will tell!
    - RosanaAnaDana 4y ago
      >Not disagreeing with your first point, but as I see it - this only enables HF to continue to spend money on making good open source tooling + doing research on open alternatives to closed source LLMs (something sorely needed), while opening them up to more enterprise customers who primarily use AWS. This is the response/ justification every time. The issue is that it never goes that way. >Time will tell! It always does. What its shown me is that one step towards the slippery slope is enough to abandon hope for the project. Every good and useful open source project I've seen go this way inevitably turns their back on their customer and long outlives their usefulness.
deleted 4y ago
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axegon_ 4y ago
There's a world of difference between OpenAI and Hugging Face. OpenAI simply has the word "open" in their name, while there is nothing open about them. Hugging Face on the other hand deserves a ton of credit and praise in that regard. It's perfectly fine for a company of that nature to partner with a big player(whether that be Microsoft or AWS or Google or whatever): infrastructure is not free, nor is it cheap. Of course AWS and Microsoft have a lot to gain from this, which is also fine for that exact reason. So long as the community continues to exist and have the ability to use, extend and participate, I don't see anything wrong. Moreover, Hugging Face has made it stupid simple for anyone to use. So Microsoft, AWS or Google, all I can say is bravo, Hugging Face and thanks for your work.

zitterbewegung 4y ago

Huggingface started off as GitHub for machine learning and anyone can download the models there. OpenAI has everything behind a black box where you don’t exactly know what actually happening. Then to monetize they host the models you want to use at a cost which would be a good investment for Amazon but you can still self host using their libraries.

enoreyes 4y ago

Hugging Face internally has a lot of very strong believers (including the exec team) in open source + decentralized approach towards AI as the only safe and productive way forward. HF is ostensibly the only place to find deep+broad resources for open source DL and transformers/diffusers are the libraries du jour of open DL. Compute is really important for AI, and having a cloud provider align themselves with an organization which is genuinely trying to be "Open" AI is I think a positive step forward.

RosanaAnaDana 4y ago
Leadership is fungible,everyone has a price, and words are innevitably wind. I would consider this a solid step in the direction agaisnt why huggingface is actually useful.
- enoreyes 4y ago
  Not disagreeing with your first point, but as I see it - this only enables HF to continue to spend money on making good open source tooling + doing research on open alternatives to closed source LLMs (something sorely needed), while opening them up to more enterprise customers who primarily use AWS. FWIW I am an ML engineer there (maybe should have disclosed earlier) and I feel pretty optimistic about the opportunities this will enable for the open source community. Maybe with the visibility into the closed door discussions I have a more positive attitude, or maybe I'm being naive. Time will tell!
  - RosanaAnaDana 4y ago
    >Not disagreeing with your first point, but as I see it - this only enables HF to continue to spend money on making good open source tooling + doing research on open alternatives to closed source LLMs (something sorely needed), while opening them up to more enterprise customers who primarily use AWS. This is the response/ justification every time. The issue is that it never goes that way. >Time will tell! It always does. What its shown me is that one step towards the slippery slope is enough to abandon hope for the project. Every good and useful open source project I've seen go this way inevitably turns their back on their customer and long outlives their usefulness.

deleted 4y ago

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axegon_ 4y ago

There's a world of difference between OpenAI and Hugging Face. OpenAI simply has the word "open" in their name, while there is nothing open about them. Hugging Face on the other hand deserves a ton of credit and praise in that regard. It's perfectly fine for a company of that nature to partner with a big player(whether that be Microsoft or AWS or Google or whatever): infrastructure is not free, nor is it cheap. Of course AWS and Microsoft have a lot to gain from this, which is also fine for that exact reason. So long as the community continues to exist and have the ability to use, extend and participate, I don't see anything wrong. Moreover, Hugging Face has made it stupid simple for anyone to use. So Microsoft, AWS or Google, all I can say is bravo, Hugging Face and thanks for your work.