3 ms·

I think there is definitely a component of competition here. Facebook has no real way to monetize this (eg they won’t release an api a la OpenAI and they don’t

I think there is definitely a component of competition here. Facebook has no real way to monetize this (eg they won’t release an api a la OpenAI and they don’t own a search engine). Since they can’t monetize it… why not provide a bit of kindling to lower the barrier for everyone else to compete with your competitors. This strategy is called “commodize your complement”. If Facebook makes it easier to develop a google alternative, especially by doing something that doesn’t hurt them, then they just weakened a competitor. See Facebook releasing datasets for mapping. Think of the panic ChatGPT caused Google. It only cost a few Million to train but it’s probably costing Google more than that already.

naasking 4y ago
Facebook maybe can't make money from it, but they arguably could save money from it, for instance in automating some fact checking and moderation activities that they currently spend quite a bit of money on.
- sclarisse 4y ago
  If you’re going to ask an AI to do fact checking with today’s technology, I would urge you to start by asking the AI a simple test question: Which is heavier? A pound of feathers or two pounds of lead?
  - elbear 4y ago
    Do you have an explanation for why it fails on this question?
    - panarky 4y ago
      Why assume it fails? ChatGPT: "One pound of feathers and two pounds of lead weigh the same, which is one pound or 16 ounces. The difference is in their volume, where a pound of feathers takes up more space than two pounds of lead. This is because the density of feathers is much less than that of lead, so even though the weight is the same, the amount of space they occupy is quite different."
      - espadrine 4y ago
        Your question makes it sound like you believe it succeeds, but the answer you pasted is incorrect. As for why it fails, it is likely a bias arising from the question being way more commonly asked in the corpus with equal mass than with distinct mass, increasing attention weights towards an answer expressing equality. I believe current LLMs lack some common sense at an architectural level. They learn both specialized facts and general deduction in the same weights class: in my mind, they should separate their world model from their instance model.
  - selfhoster11 4y ago
    I was going to provide evidence that this works correctly, but I was surprised to find that it gets severely tripped up on this particular question, even when told to “show working step by step”.
webmaven 4y ago
> Facebook has no real way to monetize this (eg they won’t release an api a la OpenAI and they don’t own a search engine). Since they can’t monetize it… why not provide a bit of kindling to lower the barrier for everyone else to compete with your competitors. This strategy is called “commodize your complement”. Your analysis is good, but that isn't what "commoditize your complement" means. Strictly speaking, a search engine isn't a complement for FBs revenue streams. Relatively little of FBs revenue can be attributed to search engine traffic leading to FBs walled garden where they can show the user ads. Complements are generally a required product or service that enables your core, but that isn't revenue generating for you. Examples for FB are data centers (so they participate in the Open Compute Project[0]), and mobile operating systems (which Google already has made a commodity, for their own reasons, with Android). What FB is doing here is commoditizing their competitors' core offering (or rather, a rather promising future one). That's just the tactic though, there are several strategies this can enable, from undermining the barriers to entry into their competitors' search markets, to actually fragmenting that market by encouraging a diversity of specialized chat interfaces over one big chat model. You can see hints of both in this announcement. Final note: FB is also protecting itself from relying on a competitor as a supplier should chat become a preferred user interface for the content on social networks, which it hasn't, but if it ever did this would count as "commoditizing their complement", though I would actually expect FB to switch to a mostly proprietary approach in that circumstance (so not much openness on having LLMs operate on social graphs and the like), just keeping the foundation they rely on, and which undermines and prevents gatekeeping by their advertising competitors, open. [0] https://www.opencompute.org/ https://www.opencompute.org/
- invig 4y ago
  I don't think that's the best interpretation of complement. Think of complement as "is your users experience benefited by the existence of the other thing". I think that Search qualifies as something that enhances the Facebook users experience (e.g. my cousin mentioned thing that they like doing today, how do I find more about thing?)
  - webmaven 4y ago
    Given FBs optimization of the feed for dopamine hits, I don't think search across posts is a high priority (yes, it is table stakes, but whatever they currently use seems to be commoditized enough for their purposes). Group and page recommendations and discovery is another matter, perhaps an LLM may help make that more engaging. It might also be useful for helping users (and brands) moderate their groups and so on. These are also complements, but they aren't external ones.

naasking 4y ago

Facebook maybe can't make money from it, but they arguably could save money from it, for instance in automating some fact checking and moderation activities that they currently spend quite a bit of money on.

sclarisse 4y ago
If you’re going to ask an AI to do fact checking with today’s technology, I would urge you to start by asking the AI a simple test question: Which is heavier? A pound of feathers or two pounds of lead?
- elbear 4y ago
  Do you have an explanation for why it fails on this question?
  - panarky 4y ago
    Why assume it fails? ChatGPT: "One pound of feathers and two pounds of lead weigh the same, which is one pound or 16 ounces. The difference is in their volume, where a pound of feathers takes up more space than two pounds of lead. This is because the density of feathers is much less than that of lead, so even though the weight is the same, the amount of space they occupy is quite different."
    - espadrine 4y ago
      Your question makes it sound like you believe it succeeds, but the answer you pasted is incorrect. As for why it fails, it is likely a bias arising from the question being way more commonly asked in the corpus with equal mass than with distinct mass, increasing attention weights towards an answer expressing equality. I believe current LLMs lack some common sense at an architectural level. They learn both specialized facts and general deduction in the same weights class: in my mind, they should separate their world model from their instance model.
- selfhoster11 4y ago
  I was going to provide evidence that this works correctly, but I was surprised to find that it gets severely tripped up on this particular question, even when told to “show working step by step”.

webmaven 4y ago

> Facebook has no real way to monetize this (eg they won’t release an api a la OpenAI and they don’t own a search engine). Since they can’t monetize it… why not provide a bit of kindling to lower the barrier for everyone else to compete with your competitors. This strategy is called “commodize your complement”. Your analysis is good, but that isn't what "commoditize your complement" means. Strictly speaking, a search engine isn't a complement for FBs revenue streams. Relatively little of FBs revenue can be attributed to search engine traffic leading to FBs walled garden where they can show the user ads. Complements are generally a required product or service that enables your core, but that isn't revenue generating for you. Examples for FB are data centers (so they participate in the Open Compute Project[0]), and mobile operating systems (which Google already has made a commodity, for their own reasons, with Android). What FB is doing here is commoditizing their competitors' core offering (or rather, a rather promising future one). That's just the tactic though, there are several strategies this can enable, from undermining the barriers to entry into their competitors' search markets, to actually fragmenting that market by encouraging a diversity of specialized chat interfaces over one big chat model. You can see hints of both in this announcement. Final note: FB is also protecting itself from relying on a competitor as a supplier should chat become a preferred user interface for the content on social networks, which it hasn't, but if it ever did this would count as "commoditizing their complement", though I would actually expect FB to switch to a mostly proprietary approach in that circumstance (so not much openness on having LLMs operate on social graphs and the like), just keeping the foundation they rely on, and which undermines and prevents gatekeeping by their advertising competitors, open. [0] https://www.opencompute.org/ https://www.opencompute.org/

invig 4y ago
I don't think that's the best interpretation of complement. Think of complement as "is your users experience benefited by the existence of the other thing". I think that Search qualifies as something that enhances the Facebook users experience (e.g. my cousin mentioned thing that they like doing today, how do I find more about thing?)
- webmaven 4y ago
  Given FBs optimization of the feed for dopamine hits, I don't think search across posts is a high priority (yes, it is table stakes, but whatever they currently use seems to be commoditized enough for their purposes). Group and page recommendations and discovery is another matter, perhaps an LLM may help make that more engaging. It might also be useful for helping users (and brands) moderate their groups and so on. These are also complements, but they aren't external ones.