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Open source AI is critical – Hugging Face CEO before US Congress
- anlsh 3y agoWeird to see huggingface in the news like this. I remember contributing some fix to it back in summer 2019 when it had 4k stars or something, and I thought it was a really popular project even then :)
- clemnt 3y agoimagine in 5 years ;)
- smoldesu 3y agoYeah, this is a perfect microcosm of how "the system" works. This guy is right! He just got there too late, with too little money and not enough fanfare. Sam Altman, on the other hand? He's the figurehead of a consumer-facing product with a brilliant marketing team and probably a crack team of lobbyists to boot. He's got billions of dollars in Microsoft funding and a product you can go use for free. All he's got to do is roll in there first with an AI alarmist response and convince lawmakers the state-of-the-art is dangerous. After all, OpenAI is synonymous with SOTA, right? So we follow the industry leaders, without really looking where they're headed. And now we end up here. Oh how I wish Open Source software was fairly represented in court. But ideas don't pay for themselves, and money talks awful loud...
- AnhTho_FR 3y agoDo you think it’s really too late though? Aren’t we just at the beginnings?
- smoldesu 3y agoIn my opinion, it's definitely too late. ChatGPT is one of the most well-marketed products of all time, and it frankly didn't achieve all that much. It scaled up current SOTA and put it behind a paywalled API, and the rest is history. It's like the fountain of youth, a dream API for most developers. Put something in, get something out. Whoever owns the endpoint just prints money. Everything after this point will just be habitually disappointing. Everything will be held to the impossibly high standard of the first time you tried ChatGPT, not the more realistic benchmarks of GPT-2, LLaMA, Bert, or even Talk-To-Transformer. I don't think it will be possible to recapture that magic, and Sam Altman was the first-mover on turning that awe into fear.
- jrm4 3y agoWeird take; doesn't strike me as at all inevitable. I can't think of any similar huge thing that won like this merely by being a first-mover. Google, Facebook, Spotify etc etc?
- troyvit 3y agoI agree. ChatGPT is like the Windows of LLMs in it's dominance but that still leaves plenty of room for smaller players to make a niche.
- uLogMicheal 3y agoSomeone will build a better app layer that supersedes theirs and they will have to hope that app sells out. The pioneering innovation left the building when they quit being open imo and their frontend / pace of development on the frontend leaves a lot of opportunity.
- jazzyjackson 3y agoEh, I think they flubbed it. Agreed that they put it on the market at a time that made a splash and gave a lot of magical first impressions, but at this point the possibility of ever trusting these things is burned, if improved models manage to lie a little less, that won't be enough to actually integrate them into mission critical tasks. Instead of an oracle they released an improv comedian. Entertaining enough but not what you want running the show.
- Panzer04 3y agoBut there's effectively 0 barrier to moving to something else, right? The simpler the API, the less lock in effect you get.
- jstarfish 3y agoThe government's interests are going to align more with OpenAI's, and they would be fools not to eliminate open source/local models. Anything local bypasses traversal of any network edges they can tap and monitor. Anything you ask Google is logged, and your search history can be subpoenaed, same as with any public library and the books you check out. OpenAI or whatever gatekeeper would assume that role and charge tolls. Do the same research with Vicuna-13B-ggml or whatever and nobody can sniff out what you're doing. Which sounds great for people who just want to jerk off and be left alone, but has terrifying implications for anybody tasked with stopping more-malicious users. Unfortunately nobody can ever compromise on these things. Best case would be adopting a law like the recent one in NL, where given probable cause the government can hack into your machine, but that won't happen. The only alternative in their favor is banning local models and open-source development of them altogether.
- visarga 3y agoThat worked well in the past with crypto. /s People yearn for "a room of their own"[1], a sanctuary for contemplation and creativity. There was a time when our minds and pieces of paper were the only canvases for our imaginations, but increasingly our web browsers have morphed into thought surveillance systems. Now, the tide is turning back towards private creative spaces, enhanced by generative AI. Even if there are attempts to ban it, the edge now lies with private AI. In the future, we might even have the ability to run even more powerful models on standard hardware. Moreover, we must consider the defensive strategies against other AI entities that will soon permeate the internet. Operating much like a firewall, private AI models could safeguard users from external threats such as involuntary data breaches and misinformation. This will be an endless cat-and-mouse game akin to battling security exploits or viruses—there's no one-size-fits-all solution. Venturing into the internet without your AI shield may soon be as unthinkable as stepping outside without a mask amidst a pandemic like COVID. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Room_of_One%27s_Own https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Room_of_One%27s_Own
- pessimizer 3y ago99% of people with crypto own it through a middle man. edit: you're talking about crypto in general. Bitcoin spam has broken my brain.
- mattnewton 3y agoI’m optimistic mostly because, a lobbyist for closing ai has the disadvantage that congress isn’t good at doing these days, and the status quo is “do nothing” on this issue. Overcoming the resistance of the status quo requires a large popular support that isn’t there and is very expensive to buy with money.
- jazzyjackson 3y ago> All he's got to do is roll in there first with an AI alarmist response and convince lawmakers the state-of-the-art is dangerous. Mr Altman didn't go before congress to convince them of anything, he was invited by Blumenthal to make their case to the media. Congress is embarrassed that social media got out of hand and is chomping at the bit to regulate AI. There was no disagreement at the testimony, the intentions of government and industry are aligned perfectly here - roll out the red carpet for centralized control, regulate competition out of existence.
- margarina72 3y agoThis sounds correct. My only hope is since AI will be regulated in the US, there is still a chance that given other countries do not have the same leverage as the US, they will keep AI unregulated as a way to avoid being controlled by the US.
- polski-g 3y agoAI will not be regulated in the US because the first amendment prohibits such regulation. Software is speech and is this protected per Bernstein v DOJ.
- jazzyjackson 3y agoYou can distribute binaries as speech but the services you're offering as an API is a different matter, more interstate commerce, what you're allowed to sell as opposed to what you're allowed to say
- elendee 3y ago"software is speech" .. if speech is taken to be solely a means of communication between humans, this statement has been untrue ever since Turing
- mcbuilder 3y agoThe horrible thing is that in the public opinion OpenAI is also incorrectly connected with "Open Source" purely due to the similarities in the name. So the two opposing approaches are conflated in the public view.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rafark 3y agoI don’t want to be that guy but iirc Sam was a wealthy person before OpenAi so it’s likely he had connections which other people didn’t have so there’s that. I could be wrong though.
- INGSOCIALITE 3y agoWhy is congress even involved in software, open source, AI, any of this?
- dharmab 3y agohttps://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript#1-8 https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcri... The Congress shall have the Power . . . To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
- anon373839 3y agoThis provision initially had some meaning, but court cases in the 1940s expanded it to include just about anything that had so much as a hypothetical butterfly effect on interstate commerce - thereby handing Congress nearly unlimited power.
- valec 3y agogonzales v raich is probably one of the more absurd examples of this
- troyvit 3y agoLuckily Congress has no idea how to wield power.
- killjoywashere 3y agoOh? Tell me, philosopher-king, how do they wield it now, and how would you wield it better?
- troyvit 3y agoWait what would a king know about congress? Actually what would a philosopher know about wielding power? Anyway, here's what journalists and think-tanks say about it: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-23/congress-has-been-losing-power-for-a-hundred-years?leadSource=uverify%20wall https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-23/congre... https://www.cato.org/commentary/its-time-make-congress-great-again# https://www.cato.org/commentary/its-time-make-congress-great...
- kaycebasques 3y agoWhat is Hugging Face's endgame? Becoming the GitHub for AI?
- nathan_compton 3y agoAren't they that already?
- jazzyjackson 3y agofacehugging
- aiappreciator 3y agoI think that is extremely obvious, given their interface looks 90% like github. They are trying to branch out into training AI models and running inference themselves. But their costs for inferencing look extremely uncompetitive compared to GPU providers like coreweave.
- pavelstoev 3y agoThey should talk to CentML.
- sien 3y agoGet purchased by AWS ?
- sledgehammers 3y agoWhatever it is, I really, really, really, really hope it's doesn't fall into the hands of microsoft, google or the rest. (But of course it will and enshittification ensues.)
- clemnt 3y agoHF's CEO here! yes hopefully if we can help power good AI democratization thanks to open science and open source, we'd be happy. Do you think that's useful?
- 3y ago
- mark_l_watson 3y agoTheir CEO did a fine job! I shared a five minute YouTube link with some friends and family. He did a great job explaining the advantages of open models and open source.
- dmingod666 3y agoI like the fact that he's still quite approachable on social media
- nmktanc 3y ago[flagged]
- forgetfreeman 3y agoI feel like this is one of those cases where the differences between open source and free software become pretty important.
- jillesvangurp 3y agoWithout getting too hung up on the semantics, what matters here is a free exchange of ideas, algorithms, and indeed some code. All this has massively accelerated progress in this space in the last two decades. Instead of sitting on their results, jealously guarding their secret sauce, etc. companies are sharing a lot of detail and are verifying each other's results by replicating them and improving on them. So OpenAI did chat gpt, Meta did llama, Google is doing Bard. Llama sort of got unleashed on the open source community and people are now starting to use that, improve it, benchmark against it with their own models, etc.
- demonshreder 3y agoIn this case semantics do matter so to keep the improvements in the Software Commons as Commons. Weak / Permissive licenses will ensure that all the voluntarily contributed labour would be enclosed and profitable only to those who can hire an army of engineers. Strong licenses will ensure your call for a free exchange.
- jillesvangurp 3y agoDepends. Overly open licenses can also motivate prevent people to not share things. Case in point here is some of the openai stuff where they shared enough so people can replicate their results but without giving away everything. People have been complaining that that's not open enough. But it's still better than them not sharing anything at all. That model certainly seems to be working well for them. Compare that with e.g. companies in China or elsewhere that are also working on AI that are perhaps sharing a bit less. That's a bit of a black hole in terms of information going in but not coming out. I think the more open people can get the better. But even some weaker licenses are better than nothing. Things are open enough currently for people to independently replicate each other's results. I think that's the important bit.
- RobotToaster 3y agoAren't the majority of models on hugging face under that weird rail licence that isn't open source?
- kattagarian 3y agoAt least on Github the majority of their projects are either on MIT or Apache 2. Or am i missing something?
- deepvibrations 3y agoHave you see Bittensor's project and what are your opinions? Would you consider integrating? I believe it may help with the open source AI movement and projects such as this!
- hospitalJail 3y agoSince GPT3 was able to diagnose a problem patient that multiple Physicians could not solve, I have been concerned that we need these local models faster than ever. (And now the patient doesn't need to take Parkinson's medication before! The family doc misdiagnosed and every specialist tried to find their own solution. Thus why my wife didn't know the diagnosis.) The AMA/Physician Cartel hates competition, they won't even like Physicians from other countries practice without going through the (regulatory capture) ACGME bottleneck. LLMs have taken/will overtake a physician's abilities for diagnosis. The math/science will prove that LLMs lead to better outcomes. It seems inevitable. However, when one person is misdiagnosed(and dies or makes for a sad, emotional story), the cartel will be able to point to it, and outspend everyone else lobbying/bribing to make LLM for medical use illegal... for our safety.
- nologic01 3y agoOpen source is an essential building block for a sane digital society that would resemble our professed values. AI is an important but ultimately small part of this overall transformation. Let me remind everybody that bitcoin, aiming to disrupt the very fundamentals of economic life, is also open source. The evolutionary process of embedding open source capabilities at societal scale is far from automatic or manifestly benign (see above crypto reference). A lot of technology, institutions, behaviors still need to be imagined, developed, tested and evangelized. That is the good, roll back your sleeves challenge for current and future generations of digital "social" engineers. I struggle to see any alternative universe that is not dystopic. Genuinely interested if people have articulated "proprietary" visions that are intellectually honest as to their incentives and morally aligned with ideas of individual agency and freedom and democratic controls.