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Looks like open-source is just a marketing tool for AI companies before they have a good enough model to sell. I guess we have to look for what Meta is going to
by rntc 3y ago
Looks like open-source is just a marketing tool for AI companies before they have a good enough model to sell. I guess we have to look for what Meta is going to do with LlaMA 3.
- behnamoh 3y agoI've been saying this for months but every time I get down voted for saying it. It annoys me that people fall for these marketing tactics and keep promoting and advertising the product for free. It's not just the models though- even tools that started off as open source ended up aiming for VC and stopped being totally open. Examples: LlamaIndex, Langchain, and most likely Ollama.
- hackerlight 3y agoWhoever is lagging will be open source. It's why AMD open sources FSR but Nvidia doesn't do the same for DLSS. There is nothing benevolent about AMD and nothing evil about Nvidia. They are both performing actions that profit maximize given their situation.
- sgu999 3y ago> They are both performing actions that profit maximize given their situation. That really rings like moral relativism. Even 15 years ago when we were still talking about "GPGPU" and OpenCL seemed like a serious competitor to Cuda, NVidia was much less open than AMD. Sure you can argue that they are "just" profit maximising, turns out it's quite detrimental to all of us... If what you're saying is that we shouldn't be naive when dealing with for-profit companies and expect good gestures, I agree. But some are more evil than others.
- Nevermark 3y agoIt isn’t moral relativism. It’s just economic sense. In both cases. There is no moral requirement to be open source. Being closed is not fraud, coercion, theft, dishonest, anti-competitive, … (On the other hand, being open, in situations where closed would be more profitable, is taking the moral high ground. Open provides better value for the customer, user, and community.) Aside from moralizing, the economic puzzle is: How to align the economic incentives of businesses with the real long term community value of openness. While also providing greater resources to successful innovators to incentivize and compound there best efforts. (Note that copyright has been the solution to this problem for cultural artifacts. And patents try to do this for tech, but with more problems and much less success.)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wokwokwok 3y agoIsn’t the ollama service already closed source? I’m pretty sure you can’t use it without connecting to the private model binary server. It’s a very small step to a paid docker hub, cough sorry, ollama hub.
- tartakovsky 3y agoollama is MIT licensed unless i am misreading
- wokwokwok 3y agoLook more closely at the software. It does not just magically conjure LLM model files out of thin air. Where do those models come from? https://github.com/ollama/ollama/issues/2390 https://github.com/ollama/ollama/issues/2390 The registry is not open source. You think I’m being unfair? https://github.com/ollama/ollama/issues/914#issuecomment-1953482174 https://github.com/ollama/ollama/issues/914#issuecomment-195... (Paraphrased) >> How do I run my own registry? > email us, let’s talk.
- anhner 3y agoHaven't been following closely, what's the issue with langchain?
- anhner 3y agowhy the hell the downvotes for asking a genuine question?
- causal 3y agoIf you're genuinely getting value from the open-source versions, how is that "falling for" anything?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nuz 3y agoFine by me. They have to get money somehow so this is expected, and in return we get top notch models to use for free. I don't mind it.
- FergusArgyll 3y agoWho cares? I still get to run an llm on my own laptop and it's the coolest feeling in the world
- pradn 3y agoHow is this a problem? So many companies have been founded around premium versions of open-source products. It's good that they've even given us as much as they have. They have to make the economics work somehow.
- michaelt 3y agoIt's not a problem from a moral perspective or anything - we all know these models are very expensive to create. However, from a marketing perspective - think of who the users of an open model are. They're people who, for one reason or another, don't want to use OpenAI's APIs. When selling a hosted API to a group predominantly comprised of people who reject hosted APIs - you've got to expect some push back.
- jasonjmcghee 3y agoIs this true? I know a whole lot of people that use and fine tune Mistral / variants and they all use OpenAI too. (For other projects or for ChatGPT) From my perspective, I want to use the best model. But maybe as models improve and for certain use cases that will start to change. If I work on a project that has certain parts that are fulfilled by Mistral and can reduce cost, that's cool. I'm surprised how expensive this model is compared to GPT-4. Only ~20% cheaper
- michaelt 3y agoWhat you say is kinda an example of what I mean. You say you know people who use and fine tune Mistral / variants You know what you can't do with Mistral Large? Fine tune it, or use variants.
- jasonjmcghee 3y agoI was mostly trying to say, in my experience, people who use open models don't only use open models. But I guess I'm hearing you say now, a key point was- the attractive part about Mistral was the open model aspect. But it's difficult to pay expenses and wages if you can't charge money. Re: fine tuning- hard for me to believe they won't add it eventually.
- HPsquared 3y agoEspecially as the model weights are literally a huge opaque binary blob. Much more opaque than even assembly code. There is plenty of precedent for what "open source" means, and these aren't it. Edit: not that I mind all that much what they're actually doing, it's just the misuse of the word that bristles.
- zozbot234 3y agoOpen source means "the preferred version for modification" and this fits with model weights since you can fine tune them with your own data. Modifying raw training data would be quite unwieldly and pointless.
- tiahura 3y agoWhen is someone capable going to take the lead in crowdfunding a Japan-based open ai project?
- htrp 3y agosakana
- lelag 3y agoWhy would a crowdfunded ai project need to be in Japan particularly ? But regardless, part of the answer might be that it might be more attractive for "capable people" to get serious money working for a for-profit AI company at the moment.
- Philpax 3y agoThat's probably an indirect reference to being able to train on copyrighted material in Japan [0]. [0] https://www.deeplearning.ai/the-batch/japan-ai-data-laws-explained/ https://www.deeplearning.ai/the-batch/japan-ai-data-laws-exp...
- m3kw9 3y agoAlways that’s the reason they go open source it’s the freeium model
- WhereIsTheTruth 3y agoHumanity has learned to fly thanks to "open source" knowledge and development https://www.cairn.info/revue-economique-2013-1-page-115.htm https://www.cairn.info/revue-economique-2013-1-page-115.htm
- mythz 3y agoWhat's there to complain about? For the price of awareness, we get access to high quality LLMs we can run from our laptops.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoThe community needs to train its own models, but I don't see any of that happening. Having the source text would be a huge advantage for research and education, but it feels totally out of reach. It's funny how people are happy to donate to OpenAI, that immediately close up at the first sniff of cash, but there doesn't seem to be any donations toward open and public development, which is the only way to guarantee availability of the results, sadly. I should add: Mistral, Meta, etc don't release open source models, all we get is the 'binary'.
- Nevermark 3y agoThose initial OpenAI donations really were for open development. The problem was, there was no formal legal restrictions put in place at the start that stopped them from hatching a private subsidiary or not remaining open. Just that the initial organization was non-profit and for AI safety. Which is the only way that could have been stopped. A failure of initial oversight. A lack of “alignment” one might say.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago> Those initial OpenAI donations really were for open development. That is surely true. > Which is the only way that could have been stopped. The problem is, no one expects a CEO to do these things, and when the gusher of money erupts there's nothing that can be done, as we saw. You cover one base, they sneak to another. Legal strictures are unlikely to contain them. Money is all conquering.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gpayan 3y agoThe cash required to develop and train the models makes the open-source approach challenging, if not impossible, for companies who don't have another business to support it. You need to be Meta - with a huge cash cow - to have the option to give away your work for free. After all OpenAI tried and came to the conclusion that it couldn't succeed as a pure open-source non-profit company no?
- michaelt 3y ago> OpenAI tried and came to the conclusion that it couldn't succeed as a pure open-source non-profit company no? Is that what they concluded? Or did they find they could either have an open source company or $80 Billion and make the decision most of us would make in that situation?
- root_axis 3y agoWhat's the alternative?