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When I wonder about the business behind Meta doing this, I see they have $70B in cash, so giving a bunch of AI experts hundreds of millions is pocket change.

by ks2048 2y ago

aoanevdus 2y ago
“Commoditize you complement” may be a good way of framing it. Consider that if OpenAI succeeds dramatically and is the only game in town, they could extract huge rents for anyone using their service. So it’s in other companies interests (or anyone who wants to use AI) that the AI ecosystem have lots of competition to keep prices low.
wrsh07 2y ago
Imagine that something fundamental shifts in the world of AI research. It could be anything: AI suddenly makes programmers much more productive, AI becomes very good at identifying vulnerabilities, AI chat becomes a new major source of entertainment, AI images become an item popularly shared on Instagram (etc) Suppose any one of these things happened and suddenly Facebook wished that it had access to state of the art models so that it could customize them for its uses (internal developers or tools, embedding in their app). Imagine how they would feel if the only way they could access these models were by signing 7-9 figure deals with a model dealer like OpenAI. Even worse, imagine if one of their main competitors in advertising started providing robust AI tools to help advertisers adapt their creatives to various form factors. Facebook is now way behind and possibly has to shell out millions to a company like OpenAI all while also losing ad market share worth billions per quarter (ads on Google start performing much better, so Google gets more ad spend) If this worst case scenario came to pass, Facebook would look foolish. If even one of these things were likely their investments make sense. The rest (open source, make meta a cool place to work) are a strategy credit.
cma 2y ago
You can't have enough top researchers without letting them publish.
almostgotcaught 2y ago
everyone that has responded so far has it wrong (naively so). FB sells ad space on several apps. those apps needs people on them in order for the ad space to be worth anything. people, in turn, need content to attract them to the apps. so it's simple: enable people/companies/whomever to generate tons of content for cheap and consequently share it on the apps. that's it.
- SideQuark 2y ago
  Except giving out the tools makes easier for competitors like TikTok to do the same, drawing revenue away from meta. So that’s not it. Naively so.
  - tzs 2y ago
    Couldn't the same argument be made for all kinds of things companies have made open? Some examples: • Tesla gave away its EV patents. • Pixar and DreamWorks have both open-sourced some of their tools, including tools used to make some of their best works. For example DreamWorks' MoonRay renderer has been used on everything they have done since "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World", including "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish" and "The Wild Robot", and will be used on their upcoming films. • Facebook open-sourced React. • Google open-sourced Chromium.
    - bee_rider 2y ago
      In the case of Tesla, if you want to sell cars, you benefit from open up your charging tech, right?
    - SideQuark 2y ago
      Yes, it can. But my reply is to the person I directly responded to that claimed these tools are for meta product benefit, but ignored that same argument applies to competitors. A better answer is meta releases them for some combination of they see it benefitting the business and/or a desire to provide broad benefits to everyone. They certainly expend tremendous resources to create these models. No other company has provided this much value to such a large base of users in this space.
sangnoir 2y ago
Those AI experts are a played a critical role in Meta getting that $70B in the first place

When I wonder about the business behind Meta doing this, I see they have $70B in cash, so giving a bunch of AI experts hundreds of millions is pocket change.

by ks2048 2y ago

When I wonder about the business behind Meta doing this, I see they have $70B in cash, so giving a bunch of AI experts hundreds of millions is pocket change.

aoanevdus 2y ago

“Commoditize you complement” may be a good way of framing it. Consider that if OpenAI succeeds dramatically and is the only game in town, they could extract huge rents for anyone using their service. So it’s in other companies interests (or anyone who wants to use AI) that the AI ecosystem have lots of competition to keep prices low.

wrsh07 2y ago

Imagine that something fundamental shifts in the world of AI research. It could be anything: AI suddenly makes programmers much more productive, AI becomes very good at identifying vulnerabilities, AI chat becomes a new major source of entertainment, AI images become an item popularly shared on Instagram (etc) Suppose any one of these things happened and suddenly Facebook wished that it had access to state of the art models so that it could customize them for its uses (internal developers or tools, embedding in their app). Imagine how they would feel if the only way they could access these models were by signing 7-9 figure deals with a model dealer like OpenAI. Even worse, imagine if one of their main competitors in advertising started providing robust AI tools to help advertisers adapt their creatives to various form factors. Facebook is now way behind and possibly has to shell out millions to a company like OpenAI all while also losing ad market share worth billions per quarter (ads on Google start performing much better, so Google gets more ad spend) If this worst case scenario came to pass, Facebook would look foolish. If even one of these things were likely their investments make sense. The rest (open source, make meta a cool place to work) are a strategy credit.

cma 2y ago

You can't have enough top researchers without letting them publish.

almostgotcaught 2y ago

everyone that has responded so far has it wrong (naively so). FB sells ad space on several apps. those apps needs people on them in order for the ad space to be worth anything. people, in turn, need content to attract them to the apps. so it's simple: enable people/companies/whomever to generate tons of content for cheap and consequently share it on the apps. that's it.

SideQuark 2y ago
Except giving out the tools makes easier for competitors like TikTok to do the same, drawing revenue away from meta. So that’s not it. Naively so.
- tzs 2y ago
  Couldn't the same argument be made for all kinds of things companies have made open? Some examples: • Tesla gave away its EV patents. • Pixar and DreamWorks have both open-sourced some of their tools, including tools used to make some of their best works. For example DreamWorks' MoonRay renderer has been used on everything they have done since "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World", including "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish" and "The Wild Robot", and will be used on their upcoming films. • Facebook open-sourced React. • Google open-sourced Chromium.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    In the case of Tesla, if you want to sell cars, you benefit from open up your charging tech, right?
  - SideQuark 2y ago
    Yes, it can. But my reply is to the person I directly responded to that claimed these tools are for meta product benefit, but ignored that same argument applies to competitors. A better answer is meta releases them for some combination of they see it benefitting the business and/or a desire to provide broad benefits to everyone. They certainly expend tremendous resources to create these models. No other company has provided this much value to such a large base of users in this space.

sangnoir 2y ago

Those AI experts are a played a critical role in Meta getting that $70B in the first place