6 ms·

The demos are great. Could someone explain what’s in it for Meta open sourcing all these models?

by s1k3s 3y ago

bick_nyers 3y ago
If anything it makes them appear to be one of the best places to work at to do research. Could be them playing the long game.
Saturdays 3y ago
theoretically what's in it for them is that people will build content faster and with less barriers for eventual consumption on their platforms
jdadj 3y ago
Commoditize Your Complement? https://gwern.net/complement https://gwern.net/complement
- maximus-decimus 3y ago
  What is it a complement to though?
  - jwestbury 3y ago
    Content is a complement to social media.
  - CrypticByte87 3y ago
    Meta has several of the biggest UGC platforms, and in this case the complement is content itself. Reels with autogenerated (and royalty free) background music is the obvious example but I'm sure there are more. Maybe creative for ads as well?
  - raincole 3y ago
    In short term it's social media, because people will share whatever they generate on social media. But I don't think it's a very strong incentive to invest in AI for Meta.
  - jononor 3y ago
    To Metaverse access. Filling the metaverse with engaging interactive 3D content is an insane job with 2020 technology. It requires a huge amount of a range of skilled labor to create 3D models, soundtracks, NPC dialog, visuals et.c. to make a compelling experience. In 2030 that may have been reduced to that everyone with creativity and Internet access can do it. Sure, most of it will be silly things - but so is social media today, does not make it any less of a commercial success. And there will be be millions of semi-pro creators to create the things with higher production value, like with videography today.
gostsamo 3y ago
They want to comoditize the offerings of OpenAI, Google, MS, and Apple. Also, they gain mindshare and good will after years of bad publicity. Some back contributions might help them improve the models for free. If they just keep their models, people won't be interested and will build over ChatGPT or Bard.
vasili111 3y ago
They will own most popular open models so they can dictate the direction in open source AI.
jamil7 3y ago
Not a fan of Meta, but haven't they generally been pretty forward with open sourcing their tech?
unnouinceput 3y ago
The same move that Microsoft did back in 90's to kill Netscape. Make your product the one available to masses, next generation of users will be using your product.
- zyang 3y ago
  I was just thinking how Google made Android free to check Microsoft. This is Meta checking Google.
  - roody15 3y ago
    Checking Google or OpenAI (or both?)
  - ipaddr 3y ago
    Checking OpenAI. Google is still playing checkers.
    - mcbuilder 3y ago
      I just can't get how bad Google is doing. They have a ton of top researchers, papers, money, just no good LLMs. It's like OpenAI was first to the punch, and everyone else just saw $$$. Meta was smart to go down this open source road, as the masses will start training their llamas one way or another. Personally I believe the "intelligence" aspect will asymptote, so even having exclusive access to a "super AI" (i.e. hypothetical 1T parameter model like a GPT5) won't be that much of a step behind the lesser AIs, and as soon as you grant access to the masses they will start to use some transfer learning to make their "lesser" models better. AI applications though still need a lot of work. The models are smart or general purpose enough to be useful to the average person out of the box.
      - rvnx 3y ago
        The problem also is that Google is making lot of grandiose announcements about tools and models that nobody can see nor use. This is a serious credibility problem in the long-term.
ipaddr 3y ago
They haven't opened sourced much. Open models/closed weights restrictive non-commercial license is something I guess. They are trying to kill the market before they get left out.
kypro 3y ago
A competitive opensource project basically destroys the pricing power of all closed-source alternatives. If you're a company and wanted to integrate an LLM into your product if the choice is between several equally good models, but one is free and open-source which would you pick? Aside from keeping competition at bay, this move also gives Meta leverage because ecosystems are now being built around their projects. If these models see wide-scale adoption they could later launch AudioCraft+ as a licensed version with some extra features for example. Alternatively, they might offer support or hosting for their open source projects. Right now though I think the primary benefit of these open sourced models is to attract talent. If Meta is seen as one of the leaders in AI then researchers will want to work for them simply for the prestige. Arguably one of the reasons Meta has been behind so many awesome projects like PyTorch and React over the last decade was because they were seen as the cool place for recently graduated, but talented software engineers to work in ~2010.
nprateem 3y ago
If people love hanging out with chatgpt or bard, they won't be wasting their precious little eyeballs on FB/Insta
hereonout2 3y ago
Was asking myself the same earlier, I'm sure it is largely to do with publicity and the fact that selling these services is not their core business. At the very least releasing this stuff probably won't damage their core business but will take the sheen off of some other big names. I wondered though, generative AI is hurling us into a world where we'll need more mechanisms to sort real from fake, provenance will play a large part, and meta's platforms could be part of the answer. i.e. content linked to actual verifiable people.
klapinat0r 3y ago
Somewhat relevant, Yann LeCun insisted the research should be open sourced. At least in an academic sense. He touches on it briefly in this podcast episode: https://www.therobotbrains.ai/who-is-yann-lecun https://www.therobotbrains.ai/who-is-yann-lecun
squidsoup 3y ago
The demos are, unsurprisingly, soulless muzak. This contributes nothing to our culture.

The demos are great. Could someone explain what’s in it for Meta open sourcing all these models?

by s1k3s 3y ago

The demos are great. Could someone explain what’s in it for Meta open sourcing all these models?

If anything it makes them appear to be one of the best places to work at to do research. Could be them playing the long game.

Saturdays 3y ago

theoretically what's in it for them is that people will build content faster and with less barriers for eventual consumption on their platforms

jdadj 3y ago

Commoditize Your Complement? https://gwern.net/complement https://gwern.net/complement

maximus-decimus 3y ago
What is it a complement to though?
- jwestbury 3y ago
  Content is a complement to social media.
- CrypticByte87 3y ago
  Meta has several of the biggest UGC platforms, and in this case the complement is content itself. Reels with autogenerated (and royalty free) background music is the obvious example but I'm sure there are more. Maybe creative for ads as well?
- raincole 3y ago
  In short term it's social media, because people will share whatever they generate on social media. But I don't think it's a very strong incentive to invest in AI for Meta.
- jononor 3y ago
  To Metaverse access. Filling the metaverse with engaging interactive 3D content is an insane job with 2020 technology. It requires a huge amount of a range of skilled labor to create 3D models, soundtracks, NPC dialog, visuals et.c. to make a compelling experience. In 2030 that may have been reduced to that everyone with creativity and Internet access can do it. Sure, most of it will be silly things - but so is social media today, does not make it any less of a commercial success. And there will be be millions of semi-pro creators to create the things with higher production value, like with videography today.

gostsamo 3y ago

They want to comoditize the offerings of OpenAI, Google, MS, and Apple. Also, they gain mindshare and good will after years of bad publicity. Some back contributions might help them improve the models for free. If they just keep their models, people won't be interested and will build over ChatGPT or Bard.

vasili111 3y ago

They will own most popular open models so they can dictate the direction in open source AI.

jamil7 3y ago

Not a fan of Meta, but haven't they generally been pretty forward with open sourcing their tech?

unnouinceput 3y ago

The same move that Microsoft did back in 90's to kill Netscape. Make your product the one available to masses, next generation of users will be using your product.

zyang 3y ago
I was just thinking how Google made Android free to check Microsoft. This is Meta checking Google.
- roody15 3y ago
  Checking Google or OpenAI (or both?)
- ipaddr 3y ago
  Checking OpenAI. Google is still playing checkers.
  - mcbuilder 3y ago
    I just can't get how bad Google is doing. They have a ton of top researchers, papers, money, just no good LLMs. It's like OpenAI was first to the punch, and everyone else just saw $$$. Meta was smart to go down this open source road, as the masses will start training their llamas one way or another. Personally I believe the "intelligence" aspect will asymptote, so even having exclusive access to a "super AI" (i.e. hypothetical 1T parameter model like a GPT5) won't be that much of a step behind the lesser AIs, and as soon as you grant access to the masses they will start to use some transfer learning to make their "lesser" models better. AI applications though still need a lot of work. The models are smart or general purpose enough to be useful to the average person out of the box.
    - rvnx 3y ago
      The problem also is that Google is making lot of grandiose announcements about tools and models that nobody can see nor use. This is a serious credibility problem in the long-term.

ipaddr 3y ago

They haven't opened sourced much. Open models/closed weights restrictive non-commercial license is something I guess. They are trying to kill the market before they get left out.

kypro 3y ago

A competitive opensource project basically destroys the pricing power of all closed-source alternatives. If you're a company and wanted to integrate an LLM into your product if the choice is between several equally good models, but one is free and open-source which would you pick? Aside from keeping competition at bay, this move also gives Meta leverage because ecosystems are now being built around their projects. If these models see wide-scale adoption they could later launch AudioCraft+ as a licensed version with some extra features for example. Alternatively, they might offer support or hosting for their open source projects. Right now though I think the primary benefit of these open sourced models is to attract talent. If Meta is seen as one of the leaders in AI then researchers will want to work for them simply for the prestige. Arguably one of the reasons Meta has been behind so many awesome projects like PyTorch and React over the last decade was because they were seen as the cool place for recently graduated, but talented software engineers to work in ~2010.

nprateem 3y ago

If people love hanging out with chatgpt or bard, they won't be wasting their precious little eyeballs on FB/Insta

hereonout2 3y ago

Was asking myself the same earlier, I'm sure it is largely to do with publicity and the fact that selling these services is not their core business. At the very least releasing this stuff probably won't damage their core business but will take the sheen off of some other big names. I wondered though, generative AI is hurling us into a world where we'll need more mechanisms to sort real from fake, provenance will play a large part, and meta's platforms could be part of the answer. i.e. content linked to actual verifiable people.

klapinat0r 3y ago

Somewhat relevant, Yann LeCun insisted the research should be open sourced. At least in an academic sense. He touches on it briefly in this podcast episode: https://www.therobotbrains.ai/who-is-yann-lecun https://www.therobotbrains.ai/who-is-yann-lecun

squidsoup 3y ago

The demos are, unsurprisingly, soulless muzak. This contributes nothing to our culture.