3 ms·

- It degrades Googles and OpenAis ability to monetize. That alone is worth gold because tech is not a blue ocean anymore - neither from a market opportunity nor

by gmerc 3y ago

- It degrades Googles and OpenAis ability to monetize. That alone is worth gold because tech is not a blue ocean anymore - neither from a market opportunity nor from an investor perspective. Your competitors loss is your gain. They can’t use money they don’t make to mount attacks to dislodge customers, investors, mindshare from you. Yes, Meta is weaponizing "open" to hurt their competitors, but we're in a capitalism world, that's about as good as it gets unless you want purity of motives. - Secondly it commoditizes AI. Zuck believes that his platforms ultimately will benefit if there is more content. Because his platforms sell the ability to show YOUR content over the rest, for coin. Just as with news/mobile games, driving the value of your content lower and lower by fostering the creation/supply of more of it is good for FB and bad for you. You have to advertise to rise above the noise. (See commoditize your complements) - Thirdly it reinforces the investor narrative that the company has a future because AI. That's important, because by now consensus is that ads future is under pressure of market saturation, regulation, competition (Apple's ability to hurt Meta at will, Amazon's increasing ads monetisation, etc.). There's more than one company that needs that narrative to land, but combined with hurting google, this is pretty good for a company that didn't have a generative AI strategy and was betting on the metaverse a year ago. - Fourth, it captures open source momentum behind your limited internal efforts. Llama, when it was first released, was not competitive - easily a year behind Google's and more behind OpenAI's efforts - but by being first to capture thousands of capable contributors, just a few months later it is one of the most efficient and scalable LLM systems out there and incorporating many innovations days after their paper releases. Open models alone, without their foundational model, would have tugged along for a while before reaching this state. What's fascinating about this situation is how it shuffles the big tech positioning. Meta and Apple, purely on a personal leadership bases, are hating each other's guts, but both Apple and Meta need Google/OpenAI to fail, for different reasons

nologic01 3y ago
Maybe it is just Zuck trying to atone himself for the damage he brought to the world. Open source AI (as in various ML/AI models developed and inferring in people's own devices) is a game changer with ramifications that are still hard to discern. E.g., what does "user content" mean anymore when you can interpolate and extrapolate from any publicly available bit of information to create infinite "near replicas"? Rationally, in such an uncertain future where the technical, legal and social boundaries and guardrails are not even sketched yet what makes sense is to keep near the ring but not in it (no need to receive random punches given you are already the designated punchbag) and above all: keep fit.
- gmerc 3y ago
  Is there any, I mean any indication at all Zuck would be ready to atone for anything? His teary “I take responsibility” perhaps, backed by which action? His reduction of integrity staffing around the world perhaps? His “we connect the world” and because connecting the world is good? His shutting down of transparency reporting maybe? He’s done this exact game before, commoditize your complements.
  - nologic01 3y ago
    > He’s done this exact game before, commoditize your complements. I would not argue with your previous points (I would be a very unlikely defender of Zuck's worldview :-) but this last one takes some discussion. It is years after pytorch (mentioned in the article as the google/tensorflow competitor) was released and its not clear which complement has been commoditized, if any. Tensorflow is also open source so it cannot be further commoditized. The main entities affected by the rapid development of open source ML platforms are niche proprietary vendors of algorithmic tools - hardly Meta's complement. People have advanced various reasons (keeping internal staff happy, attracting talent, buying good will etc) but releasing various AI tools in order to ensure "continuing commercial dominance in adtech" would be a very long game indeed. Happy to be enlightened if somebody can connect the dots deep into the future.
    - gmerc 3y ago
      Pytorch fits in the same bucket as datacenter hardware. By giving the designs away they drove the price down, made it easier and cheaper to hire people familiar with the technology and reduced the risk of sitting on an outdated stack being overtaken by someone else (or worse, someone else capturing open source momentum). What happened with llama and stable diffusion is (another) cautionary tale for anyone gambling on proprietary technology advantages. Your competitors can hurt you both directly and indirectly if you leave the open source route open and Sam Altman being on world diplomacy tours selling regulators on the dream they can control AI China style by regulating a few willing large companies makes a lot more sense when you compare the open source trajectory against proprietary models (and because Meta doesn’t charge, they are a slippery fish to action). Meta easily shaved billions of dollars from the proprietary market over time at very little cost to themselves because LLama was an existing long term investment whose primary costs were already incurred at release time and it had no serious market viability as a proprietary model without vastly more investment and cost. It’s the open source contributions that made it competitive.
kypro 3y ago
I agree with all of your points, but I think many of these models may be to support their ambitions in VR. One because it allows them to build VR devices that can do things like track objects, but also open sourcing it may mean there are more developers who can build applications which can do similar things.
- Philpax 3y ago
  Not only that, but their generative models could contribute significantly to the problem of content production for the metaverse. If the end goal is for anyone to be able to construct their own virtual world, they'll need a way to translate fuzzy human commands into actual assets.
- varispeed 3y ago
  > but also open sourcing it may mean there are more developers who can build applications which can do similar things. and they don't need to spend money on in-house developers and their training. If any company makes a useful and groundbreaking development, they can just buy them - it saves them a lot of money in the long run.
mi_lk 3y ago
Why do I feel like I read this before? Did you comment the same somewhere else
- gmerc 3y ago
  I made a shorter version of this comment on a different thread
smokel 3y ago
Even though I tend to agree with these, I feel uneasy about them being stated as facts. There could be more mundane _intended_ reasons for doing research, such as working on a VR program, as mentioned in a sibling comment. Some people believe that upper management of these companies are brilliant masterminds who play chess with the world, but, personally, I highly doubt that such a thing is even possible.
- gmerc 3y ago
  I worked there (no specific insights into the situation though), I have no such illusions of brilliant leadership but at the same time, if this course of action seems the logical move for me, so it will be to any number of other people. I don’t think these were long term planned moves, more pivots to react to a rapidly changing external environment that required decisive action and were made from a limited palette of options. It requires only one of these benefits to be the goal as well, the rest is cherry on top - Stability for example did a similar move (give it away) when faced with the funding environment and a much deeper funded opponent and in general it worked out well for them and made what happened with LLama a predictable option with several positive effects (investor virtue signaling on AI, open source contributions, avoidance of negative externalities since they “leaked” the model rather than operating it ) Ultimately though, these are real effects - the reasons why the actions were taken may control the framing (brilliant strategists vs accident genius vs desperate cornered CEO), I am not sure that framing matters all that much.
  - michaelt 3y ago
    > Ultimately though, these are real effects - the reasons why the actions were taken may control the framing (brilliant strategists vs accident genius vs desperate cornered CEO), I am not sure that framing matters all that much. Seems to me the state of mind of leadership is pretty crucial in knowing what the future of these models will be. If the strategy is to release interesting-but-not-business-relevant R&D results as a reputation-building/recruiting tool, we might expect other models in the future, but no big effort to maintain models after release, and models that make a big competitive advantage to be kept secret. If the high level strategy is to enable ML content creation so you can sell ads alongside it, we might expect Facebook to adopt friendly policies towards such content. If the strategy is to gain investor confidence about the future of the company, we might think after their reputation is established, flashy demos of closed models will serve just as well as open models. If the strategy is to mess up Google's revenue streams with for no particular benefit to Meta, it's hard to know what else we'd expect - or if peace could break out and their strategy might change completely.
ChatGTP 3y ago
- Secondly it commoditizes AI. Zuck believes that his platforms ultimately will benefit if there is more content. Because his platforms sell the ability to show YOUR content over the rest, for coin. Just as with news/mobile games, driving the value of your content lower and lower by fostering the creation/supply of more of it is good for FB and bad for you. You have to advertise to rise above the noise. (See commoditize your complements) It's interesting though becaue now I know there is more and more AI generated content on IG, I actually feel like it's less worth my time to be on there. I already thought it was a stupid activity, looking at fake people do literally nothing is just the icing on the cake for me.

by gmerc 3y ago

nologic01 3y ago

Maybe it is just Zuck trying to atone himself for the damage he brought to the world. Open source AI (as in various ML/AI models developed and inferring in people's own devices) is a game changer with ramifications that are still hard to discern. E.g., what does "user content" mean anymore when you can interpolate and extrapolate from any publicly available bit of information to create infinite "near replicas"? Rationally, in such an uncertain future where the technical, legal and social boundaries and guardrails are not even sketched yet what makes sense is to keep near the ring but not in it (no need to receive random punches given you are already the designated punchbag) and above all: keep fit.

gmerc 3y ago
Is there any, I mean any indication at all Zuck would be ready to atone for anything? His teary “I take responsibility” perhaps, backed by which action? His reduction of integrity staffing around the world perhaps? His “we connect the world” and because connecting the world is good? His shutting down of transparency reporting maybe? He’s done this exact game before, commoditize your complements.
- nologic01 3y ago
  > He’s done this exact game before, commoditize your complements. I would not argue with your previous points (I would be a very unlikely defender of Zuck's worldview :-) but this last one takes some discussion. It is years after pytorch (mentioned in the article as the google/tensorflow competitor) was released and its not clear which complement has been commoditized, if any. Tensorflow is also open source so it cannot be further commoditized. The main entities affected by the rapid development of open source ML platforms are niche proprietary vendors of algorithmic tools - hardly Meta's complement. People have advanced various reasons (keeping internal staff happy, attracting talent, buying good will etc) but releasing various AI tools in order to ensure "continuing commercial dominance in adtech" would be a very long game indeed. Happy to be enlightened if somebody can connect the dots deep into the future.
  - gmerc 3y ago
    Pytorch fits in the same bucket as datacenter hardware. By giving the designs away they drove the price down, made it easier and cheaper to hire people familiar with the technology and reduced the risk of sitting on an outdated stack being overtaken by someone else (or worse, someone else capturing open source momentum). What happened with llama and stable diffusion is (another) cautionary tale for anyone gambling on proprietary technology advantages. Your competitors can hurt you both directly and indirectly if you leave the open source route open and Sam Altman being on world diplomacy tours selling regulators on the dream they can control AI China style by regulating a few willing large companies makes a lot more sense when you compare the open source trajectory against proprietary models (and because Meta doesn’t charge, they are a slippery fish to action). Meta easily shaved billions of dollars from the proprietary market over time at very little cost to themselves because LLama was an existing long term investment whose primary costs were already incurred at release time and it had no serious market viability as a proprietary model without vastly more investment and cost. It’s the open source contributions that made it competitive.

kypro 3y ago

I agree with all of your points, but I think many of these models may be to support their ambitions in VR. One because it allows them to build VR devices that can do things like track objects, but also open sourcing it may mean there are more developers who can build applications which can do similar things.

Philpax 3y ago
Not only that, but their generative models could contribute significantly to the problem of content production for the metaverse. If the end goal is for anyone to be able to construct their own virtual world, they'll need a way to translate fuzzy human commands into actual assets.
varispeed 3y ago
> but also open sourcing it may mean there are more developers who can build applications which can do similar things. and they don't need to spend money on in-house developers and their training. If any company makes a useful and groundbreaking development, they can just buy them - it saves them a lot of money in the long run.

mi_lk 3y ago

Why do I feel like I read this before? Did you comment the same somewhere else

gmerc 3y ago
I made a shorter version of this comment on a different thread

smokel 3y ago

Even though I tend to agree with these, I feel uneasy about them being stated as facts. There could be more mundane _intended_ reasons for doing research, such as working on a VR program, as mentioned in a sibling comment. Some people believe that upper management of these companies are brilliant masterminds who play chess with the world, but, personally, I highly doubt that such a thing is even possible.

gmerc 3y ago
I worked there (no specific insights into the situation though), I have no such illusions of brilliant leadership but at the same time, if this course of action seems the logical move for me, so it will be to any number of other people. I don’t think these were long term planned moves, more pivots to react to a rapidly changing external environment that required decisive action and were made from a limited palette of options. It requires only one of these benefits to be the goal as well, the rest is cherry on top - Stability for example did a similar move (give it away) when faced with the funding environment and a much deeper funded opponent and in general it worked out well for them and made what happened with LLama a predictable option with several positive effects (investor virtue signaling on AI, open source contributions, avoidance of negative externalities since they “leaked” the model rather than operating it ) Ultimately though, these are real effects - the reasons why the actions were taken may control the framing (brilliant strategists vs accident genius vs desperate cornered CEO), I am not sure that framing matters all that much.
- michaelt 3y ago
  > Ultimately though, these are real effects - the reasons why the actions were taken may control the framing (brilliant strategists vs accident genius vs desperate cornered CEO), I am not sure that framing matters all that much. Seems to me the state of mind of leadership is pretty crucial in knowing what the future of these models will be. If the strategy is to release interesting-but-not-business-relevant R&D results as a reputation-building/recruiting tool, we might expect other models in the future, but no big effort to maintain models after release, and models that make a big competitive advantage to be kept secret. If the high level strategy is to enable ML content creation so you can sell ads alongside it, we might expect Facebook to adopt friendly policies towards such content. If the strategy is to gain investor confidence about the future of the company, we might think after their reputation is established, flashy demos of closed models will serve just as well as open models. If the strategy is to mess up Google's revenue streams with for no particular benefit to Meta, it's hard to know what else we'd expect - or if peace could break out and their strategy might change completely.

ChatGTP 3y ago

- Secondly it commoditizes AI. Zuck believes that his platforms ultimately will benefit if there is more content. Because his platforms sell the ability to show YOUR content over the rest, for coin. Just as with news/mobile games, driving the value of your content lower and lower by fostering the creation/supply of more of it is good for FB and bad for you. You have to advertise to rise above the noise. (See commoditize your complements) It's interesting though becaue now I know there is more and more AI generated content on IG, I actually feel like it's less worth my time to be on there. I already thought it was a stupid activity, looking at fake people do literally nothing is just the icing on the cake for me.