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I think one should attribute a good amount of credit of this to Yann LeCun (head of meta's research). From early stage he have been vocal about keeping things o

I think one should attribute a good amount of credit of this to Yann LeCun (head of meta's research). From early stage he have been vocal about keeping things open-source, and voiced that to Mark before even joining. (and credit to Mark for keeping that). It probably also stems from his experience working at Bell Labs, and how his pioneering work very much required a lot of help from things available openly, as is still the case in academia. The man have been repeating the advantage of open-source being the better option, and been very vocal about his opposition to "regulate AI (read: let a handful of US government aligned closed-source companies have complete monopoly on AI under the guise of ethics)". On this point he (and meta) stands in a pretty stark contrast to a lot of big-tech AI mainstream voices. Me myself recently moved some research tech stack to meta stuff, and unlike platform that basically stops being supported as soon as the main contributor finishes his PhD, it have been great to work on it (and they're usually open to feedback and fixes/PR).

JoshTriplett 2y ago
> regulate AI (read: let a handful of US government aligned closed-source companies have complete monopoly on AI under the guise of ethics) Regulatory capture would certainly be a bad outcome. Unfortunately, the collateral damage has been to also suppress regulation aimed at making AI safer, advocated by people who are not interested in AI company profits, but rather in arguing that "move fast and break things" is not a safe strategy for building AGI. It's been remarkably effective for the original "move fast and break things" company to attempt to sweep all safety under the rug by claiming that it's all a conspiracy by Big AI to do regulatory capture, and in the process, leave themselves entirely unchecked by anyone.
- fallingknife 2y ago
  When Sam Altman is calling for AI regulation, yes it is a conspiracy by big AI to do regulatory capture. What is this regulation aimed at making AI safer that you refer to anyway? Because I certainly haven't heard of it. Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be any agreement on whether or how AI, at a state remotely similar to the level it is at today, is dangerous or how to mitigate that danger. How can you even attempt to regulate in good faith without that?
  - cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
    This is coincidentally a ridiculously bad-faith argument, and I think that you know that. The fact that one particular person is advocating for AI regulation does not mean that all calling for AI regulation are doing so due to having the same incentives. This is exactly the point the parent poster is making. It feels like you only skimmed the comment before replying to it.
    - Uehreka 2y ago
      When I talk to folks like GP, they often assert that the non-CEO people who are advocating for AI safety are essentially non-factors, that really the only people whose policy agendas will be enacted are those who already have power, and therefore that the opinions of everyday activists don’t need to be considered when discussing these issues. It’s a darkly nihilistic take that I don’t agree with, but I just wanted to distill it here because I often see people imply it without stating it out loud.
  - JoshTriplett 2y ago
    > When Sam Altman is calling for AI regulation Sure; that's almost certainly not being done in good faith. When numerous AI experts and luminaries who left their jobs in AI are advocating for AI regulation, that's much more likely to be being done in good faith. > What is this regulation aimed at making AI safer https://pauseai.info/ https://pauseai.info/ > Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be any agreement on whether or how AI, at a state remotely similar to the level it is at today, is dangerous You could also write that as "there's no agreement that AI is safe". But that aside... Most of the arguments about AI safety are not about current AI technology. (There are some reasonable arguments about the use of AI for impersonation, such as that AI-generated content should be labeled as such, but those are much less critical and they aren't the critical part of AI safety.) The most critical arguments about AI safety are not primarily about current technology. They're about near-future expansions of AI capabilities. https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.01933 https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.01933 > how to mitigate that danger Pause capabilities research until we have proven strategies for aligning AI to human safety. > How can you even attempt to regulate in good faith without that? We don't know that it's safe, many people are arguing that it's dangerous on an unprecedented scale, there are no good refutations of those arguments, and we don't know how to ensure its safety. That's not a situation in which "we shouldn't do anything about it" is a good idea. How can you even attempt to regulate biological weapons research without having a good way to mitigate it? By stopping biological weapons research.
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  I think the whole "AGI safety" debate is a red herring that has taken attention away from the negative externalities of AI as it exists today. Namely, (even more) data collection from users and questions of IP rights around models and their outputs.
  - JoshTriplett 2y ago
    We can do more than one thing at a time. (Or, more to the point, different people can do different things.) We can advocate against misuses of current capabilities, and advocate about the much larger threats of future capabilities.
    - flappyeagle 2y ago
      We really can’t. We are terrible at multitasking.
      - williamcotton 2y ago
        If you look around you’ll see that there are indeed very many people who are doing very different things from one another and without much centralized coordination.
        ethbr1 2y ago
        Parent is likely referring to political/mass pressure behind initiatives. In which case the lack of a clear singular message, when confronted with a determined and amoral adversary, dissolves into confusion. Most classically, because the adversary plants PR behind "It's still an open debate among experts." See: cigarettes, climate change
    - Onavo 2y ago
      There's a big fucking difference between people who want to regulate AI because they might become a doomsday terminator paperclip factory (the register-model-with-government-if-they-are-too-big-crowd) and the folks who want to prevent AI being used to indirectly discriminate in hiring and immigration.
- atemerev 2y ago
  If we are interested in AGI safety, we should experiment with slightly unsafe things before they become hugely unsafe, instead of trying to fix known unknowns while ignoring unknown unknowns. We should open source current small models and observe what different people are actually doing with them. How they abuse it. We will never invent some things on our own.
- wruza 2y ago
  This regulation can only be done through a clueless government body listening to sneaky AI leaders. Let's make it new healthcare? Premature regulation is the last thing you want. For a bigger pic, it's time for the civilization to realize that speech itself is dangerous and to build something that isn't prone to "someone with <n>M subs said something and it began" that much. Without such transformation, it will get stuck in this era of bs forever. "Safety" is the rug. It hides the wires while the explosives remain armed. You can only three-monkey it for so long.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - celdon25 2y ago
    This seems like an uninformed rant to me. I’m not even sure where you’re trying to go with that. Do you know offhand, approximately what percentage of the White House AI Council members are from the private sector? The government doesn’t need to seek advice from tech bro billionaires.
brap 2y ago
>I think one should attribute a good amount of credit of this to Yann LeCun (head of meta's research). From early stage he have been vocal about keeping things open-source, and voiced that to Mark before even joining. (and credit to Mark for keeping that). That's all very nice and good, but Meta keeps things open (for now) because it's perfectly aligned with their business goals. It couldn't have happened any other way.
- blueboo 2y ago
  Also is perfectly aligned with Yann’s goals as an (academic) researcher whose career is built on academic community kudos far more than, say, building a successful business
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    I'd definitely rather build a product on an assumption that a company/individual will continue to act in its own best interest than on its largess.
- kaliqt 2y ago
  That's a good thing.
- sqren 2y ago
  You make it sound like it's a bad thing that it aligns with their business goals. I'd turn this around: if it didn't align with their business goals I would be worried that they would course correct very soon.
  - pydry 2y ago
    No, just that they shouldn't be showered with praise for doing what is in their best interests - commoditizing their complement. For the same reason Microsoft doesn't deserve credit for going all in on linux/open source when they did. They were doing it to stave off irrelevance that came from being out-competed by open source. They were not doing it because they had a sudden "come to jesus" moment about how great open source was. In both cases, it was a business decision being marketed as an ideological decision.
helsinkiandrew 2y ago
> I think one should attribute a good amount of credit of this to Yann LeCun (head of meta's research) Isn't this more attributable to the fact that whilst Open AI's business model is to monetise AI, FB has another working business model and it costs them little to open source their AI work (whilst restricting access by competitors).
- fer 2y ago
  Yeah, the way I see it Meta is undermining OpenAI's business model because it can, I have serious doubts Meta would be doing as it does with OpenAI out of the picture.
  - mewpmewp2 2y ago
    Also Meta's models are nowhere near as advanced so they couldn't even ask significant amount of money for them.
  - HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
    Things like PyTorch help everyone (massively!), including OpenAI. Another of Meta's major "open source" initiatives is Open Compute which has nothing to do with OpenAI. I see zero relationship between Meta's open source initiatives and OpenAI. Why would there be? OpenAI is not a competitor, and in fact help push the field of AI forwards which is helpful to Meta.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      Meta's advantage in AI is that they have leading-scale and continuous feeds of content to which they have legal entitlement. (Unlike OpenAI) If state of open art pushes forward and is cutting edge, Meta wins (English) by default.
  - foobar_______ 2y ago
    This is clear as day. If they got an early lead to the LLM/AI space like OpenAI did with ChatGPT, then things would be very different. Attributing the open source to "good will" and Meta being righteous seems like some mis-founded 16 year old's overly simplistic ideal of the world. Meta is a business. Period.
zer0c00ler 2y ago
[dead]
lern_too_spel 2y ago
Part that and part Zuckerberg's misanthropy. Zuckerberg doesn't care about Facebook's harms to children and society as long as he makes a quick buck. He also doesn't care about gen AI's potential to harm society for the same reason.
hintymad 2y ago
I thought LeCun once said he was not the head of the research and he didn't manage people. Nonetheless, I'm sure he has enormous influence in Meta.
aaroninsf 2y ago
LeCun is a blowhard and a hack, who lies regularly with great bluster and self-assurance.
- baegi 2y ago
  Can you elaborate?

JoshTriplett 2y ago

> regulate AI (read: let a handful of US government aligned closed-source companies have complete monopoly on AI under the guise of ethics) Regulatory capture would certainly be a bad outcome. Unfortunately, the collateral damage has been to also suppress regulation aimed at making AI safer, advocated by people who are not interested in AI company profits, but rather in arguing that "move fast and break things" is not a safe strategy for building AGI. It's been remarkably effective for the original "move fast and break things" company to attempt to sweep all safety under the rug by claiming that it's all a conspiracy by Big AI to do regulatory capture, and in the process, leave themselves entirely unchecked by anyone.

fallingknife 2y ago
When Sam Altman is calling for AI regulation, yes it is a conspiracy by big AI to do regulatory capture. What is this regulation aimed at making AI safer that you refer to anyway? Because I certainly haven't heard of it. Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be any agreement on whether or how AI, at a state remotely similar to the level it is at today, is dangerous or how to mitigate that danger. How can you even attempt to regulate in good faith without that?
- cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
  This is coincidentally a ridiculously bad-faith argument, and I think that you know that. The fact that one particular person is advocating for AI regulation does not mean that all calling for AI regulation are doing so due to having the same incentives. This is exactly the point the parent poster is making. It feels like you only skimmed the comment before replying to it.
  - Uehreka 2y ago
    When I talk to folks like GP, they often assert that the non-CEO people who are advocating for AI safety are essentially non-factors, that really the only people whose policy agendas will be enacted are those who already have power, and therefore that the opinions of everyday activists don’t need to be considered when discussing these issues. It’s a darkly nihilistic take that I don’t agree with, but I just wanted to distill it here because I often see people imply it without stating it out loud.
- JoshTriplett 2y ago
  > When Sam Altman is calling for AI regulation Sure; that's almost certainly not being done in good faith. When numerous AI experts and luminaries who left their jobs in AI are advocating for AI regulation, that's much more likely to be being done in good faith. > What is this regulation aimed at making AI safer https://pauseai.info/ https://pauseai.info/ > Furthermore, there doesn't seem to be any agreement on whether or how AI, at a state remotely similar to the level it is at today, is dangerous You could also write that as "there's no agreement that AI is safe". But that aside... Most of the arguments about AI safety are not about current AI technology. (There are some reasonable arguments about the use of AI for impersonation, such as that AI-generated content should be labeled as such, but those are much less critical and they aren't the critical part of AI safety.) The most critical arguments about AI safety are not primarily about current technology. They're about near-future expansions of AI capabilities. https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.01933 https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.01933 > how to mitigate that danger Pause capabilities research until we have proven strategies for aligning AI to human safety. > How can you even attempt to regulate in good faith without that? We don't know that it's safe, many people are arguing that it's dangerous on an unprecedented scale, there are no good refutations of those arguments, and we don't know how to ensure its safety. That's not a situation in which "we shouldn't do anything about it" is a good idea. How can you even attempt to regulate biological weapons research without having a good way to mitigate it? By stopping biological weapons research.
AlexandrB 2y ago
I think the whole "AGI safety" debate is a red herring that has taken attention away from the negative externalities of AI as it exists today. Namely, (even more) data collection from users and questions of IP rights around models and their outputs.
- JoshTriplett 2y ago
  We can do more than one thing at a time. (Or, more to the point, different people can do different things.) We can advocate against misuses of current capabilities, and advocate about the much larger threats of future capabilities.
  - flappyeagle 2y ago
    We really can’t. We are terrible at multitasking.
    - williamcotton 2y ago
      If you look around you’ll see that there are indeed very many people who are doing very different things from one another and without much centralized coordination.
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        Parent is likely referring to political/mass pressure behind initiatives. In which case the lack of a clear singular message, when confronted with a determined and amoral adversary, dissolves into confusion. Most classically, because the adversary plants PR behind "It's still an open debate among experts." See: cigarettes, climate change
  - Onavo 2y ago
    There's a big fucking difference between people who want to regulate AI because they might become a doomsday terminator paperclip factory (the register-model-with-government-if-they-are-too-big-crowd) and the folks who want to prevent AI being used to indirectly discriminate in hiring and immigration.
atemerev 2y ago
If we are interested in AGI safety, we should experiment with slightly unsafe things before they become hugely unsafe, instead of trying to fix known unknowns while ignoring unknown unknowns. We should open source current small models and observe what different people are actually doing with them. How they abuse it. We will never invent some things on our own.
wruza 2y ago
This regulation can only be done through a clueless government body listening to sneaky AI leaders. Let's make it new healthcare? Premature regulation is the last thing you want. For a bigger pic, it's time for the civilization to realize that speech itself is dangerous and to build something that isn't prone to "someone with <n>M subs said something and it began" that much. Without such transformation, it will get stuck in this era of bs forever. "Safety" is the rug. It hides the wires while the explosives remain armed. You can only three-monkey it for so long.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- celdon25 2y ago
  This seems like an uninformed rant to me. I’m not even sure where you’re trying to go with that. Do you know offhand, approximately what percentage of the White House AI Council members are from the private sector? The government doesn’t need to seek advice from tech bro billionaires.

brap 2y ago

>I think one should attribute a good amount of credit of this to Yann LeCun (head of meta's research). From early stage he have been vocal about keeping things open-source, and voiced that to Mark before even joining. (and credit to Mark for keeping that). That's all very nice and good, but Meta keeps things open (for now) because it's perfectly aligned with their business goals. It couldn't have happened any other way.

blueboo 2y ago
Also is perfectly aligned with Yann’s goals as an (academic) researcher whose career is built on academic community kudos far more than, say, building a successful business
- ethbr1 2y ago
  I'd definitely rather build a product on an assumption that a company/individual will continue to act in its own best interest than on its largess.
kaliqt 2y ago
That's a good thing.
sqren 2y ago
You make it sound like it's a bad thing that it aligns with their business goals. I'd turn this around: if it didn't align with their business goals I would be worried that they would course correct very soon.
- pydry 2y ago
  No, just that they shouldn't be showered with praise for doing what is in their best interests - commoditizing their complement. For the same reason Microsoft doesn't deserve credit for going all in on linux/open source when they did. They were doing it to stave off irrelevance that came from being out-competed by open source. They were not doing it because they had a sudden "come to jesus" moment about how great open source was. In both cases, it was a business decision being marketed as an ideological decision.

helsinkiandrew 2y ago

> I think one should attribute a good amount of credit of this to Yann LeCun (head of meta's research) Isn't this more attributable to the fact that whilst Open AI's business model is to monetise AI, FB has another working business model and it costs them little to open source their AI work (whilst restricting access by competitors).

fer 2y ago
Yeah, the way I see it Meta is undermining OpenAI's business model because it can, I have serious doubts Meta would be doing as it does with OpenAI out of the picture.
- mewpmewp2 2y ago
  Also Meta's models are nowhere near as advanced so they couldn't even ask significant amount of money for them.
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
  Things like PyTorch help everyone (massively!), including OpenAI. Another of Meta's major "open source" initiatives is Open Compute which has nothing to do with OpenAI. I see zero relationship between Meta's open source initiatives and OpenAI. Why would there be? OpenAI is not a competitor, and in fact help push the field of AI forwards which is helpful to Meta.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    Meta's advantage in AI is that they have leading-scale and continuous feeds of content to which they have legal entitlement. (Unlike OpenAI) If state of open art pushes forward and is cutting edge, Meta wins (English) by default.
- foobar_______ 2y ago
  This is clear as day. If they got an early lead to the LLM/AI space like OpenAI did with ChatGPT, then things would be very different. Attributing the open source to "good will" and Meta being righteous seems like some mis-founded 16 year old's overly simplistic ideal of the world. Meta is a business. Period.

zer0c00ler 2y ago

[dead]

lern_too_spel 2y ago

Part that and part Zuckerberg's misanthropy. Zuckerberg doesn't care about Facebook's harms to children and society as long as he makes a quick buck. He also doesn't care about gen AI's potential to harm society for the same reason.

hintymad 2y ago

I thought LeCun once said he was not the head of the research and he didn't manage people. Nonetheless, I'm sure he has enormous influence in Meta.

aaroninsf 2y ago

LeCun is a blowhard and a hack, who lies regularly with great bluster and self-assurance.

baegi 2y ago
Can you elaborate?