5 ms·
Dont make the mistake of anthropomorphizing Mark Zuckerberg. He didnt open source anything because he's a "good guy", he's just commoditizing the complement. T
by pydry 1y ago
Dont make the mistake of anthropomorphizing Mark Zuckerberg. He didnt open source anything because he's a "good guy", he's just commoditizing the complement.
The "good guy" is a competitive environment that would render Meta's AI offerings to be irrelevant right now if it didnt open source.
- moralestapia 1y ago>he's just commoditizing the complement That's a cool smaht phrase but help me understand, for which Meta products are LLMs a complement?
- ethbr1 1y agoA continuous stream of monetizable live user data? The entire point of Meta owning everything is that it wants as much of your data stream as it can get, so it can then sell more ad products derived from that. If much of that data begins going off-Meta, because someone else has better LLMs and builds them into products, that's a huge loss to Meta.
- moralestapia 1y agoSorry, I don't follow. >because someone else has better LLMs and builds them into products If that were true they wouldn't be trying to create the best LLM and give it for free. (Disclaimer: I don't think Zuck is doing this out of the good of his heart, obv. but I don't see the connection with the complements and whatnot)
- mu53 1y agoI think its about sapping as much user data from competitors. A company seeking to use an LLM has a choice between OpenAI, LLaMA, and others. If they choose LLaMA because it's free and host it themselves, OpenAI misses out on training data and other data like that
- chartered_stack 1y agoWell is the loss of training data from customers using self-hosted Llama that big a deal for OpenAI or any of the big labs at this point? Maybe in late-2022/early-2023 during the early stages of RLHF'd mass models but not today I don't think. Offerings from the big labs have pretty much settled into specific niches and people have started using them in certain ways across the board. The early land grab is over and consolidation has started.
- comfysocks 1y agoMeta has ad revenue. I think Meta’s play is to make it difficult for pure AI competitors to make revenue through LLMs.
- simianwords 1y agoThat’s not commoditising the complement!
- comfysocks 1y agoI’m not the poster that said it was that.
- ethbr1 1y agoMeta's play is to make sure there isn't an obvious superiority to one company's closed LLM -- because that's what would drive customers to choosing that company's product(s). If LLM effectiveness is all about the same, then other factors dominate customer choice. Like which (legacy) platforms have the strongest network effects. (Which Meta would be thrilled about)
- HDThoreaun 1y agoVR/metaverse is dead in the water without gen AI. The content takes too long to make otherwise
- fantispug 1y agoMeta's primary business is capturing attention and selling some of that attention to advertisers. They do this by distributing content to users in a way that maximizes attention. Content is a complement to their content distribution system. LLMs, along with image and video generation models, are generators of very dynamic, engaging and personalised content. If Open AI or anyone else wins a monopoly there it could be terrible for Meta's business. Commoditizing it with Llama, and at the same time building internal capability and a community for their LLMs, was solid strategy from Meta.
- moralestapia 1y agoSo, imagine a world where everyone but Meta has access to generative AI. There's two products: A) (Meta) Hey, here are all your family members and friends, you can keep up with them in our apps, message them, see what they're up to, etc... B) (OpenAI and others) Hey, we generated some artificial friends for you, they will write messages to you everyday, almost like a real human! They also look like this (queue AI generated profile picture). We will post updates on the imaginary adventures we come up with, written by LLMs. We will simulate a whole existence around you, "age" like real humans, we might even get married between us and have imaginary babies. You could attend our virtual generated wedding online, using the latest technology, and you can send us gifts and money to celebrate these significant events. And, presumably, people will prefer to use B? MEGA lmao.
- Zambyte 1y agoTheir primary product: advertisements. It takes content to sell advertisements online. LLMs produce an infinite stream of content.
- somenameforme 1y agoThe reason Machiavellianism is stupid is that the grand ends the means aim to obtain often never come to pass, but the awful things done in pursuit of them certainly do. So the motivation behind those means doesn't excuse them. And I see no reason the inverse of this doesn't hold true. I couldn't care less if Zuckerburg thinks open sourcing Llama is some grand scheme to let him to take over the world to become its god-king emperor. In reality, that almost certainly won't happen. But what certainly will happen is the world getting free and open source access to LLM systems. When any scheme involves some grand long-term goal, I think a far more naive approach to behaviors is much more appropriate in basically all cases. There's a million twists on that old quote that 'no plan survives first contact with the enemy', and with these sort of grand schemes - we're all that enemy. Bring on the malevolent schemers with their benevolent means - the world would be a much nicer place than one filled with benevolent schemers with their malevolent means.
- hansvm 1y ago> The reason Machiavellianism is stupid is that the grand ends the means aim to obtain often never come to pass That doesn't feel quite right as an explanation. If something fails 10 times, that just makes the means 10x worse. If the ends justify the means then doesn't that still fit into Machiavellian principles? Isn't the complaint closet to "sometimes the ends don't justify the means"?
- somenameforme 1y agoYou have to assume a grand ends is achievable through some knowable means. I don't see any real reason to think this is the case, certainly not on any sort of a meaningful timeframe. And I think this is even less true when we consider the typical connotation of Machiavellianism, which is through 'evil' actions. It's extremely difficult to think of any real achievements sustained on the back of Machiavellianism, but one can list essentially endless entities whose downfall was brought on precisely by such.
- bit1993 1y agoMachiavellianism is not for everyone. It is specifically a framework for people in power. Kings, Heads of States, CEOs, Commanders. Competitive environments with allot at stake (peoples lives, money, future), in these environments it is often difficult to make decisions. Having a framework in place that allows you to make decisions is very useful.
- ddellacosta 1y ago> Dont make the mistake of anthropomorphizing Mark Zuckerberg Considering the rest of your comment it's not clear to me if "anthropomorphizing" really captures the meaning you intended, but regardless, I love this
- shwaj 1y agoI think it’s a play on “don’t anthropomorphize the lawn mower”, referring to Larry Ellison.
- p4ul 1y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2308s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2308s
- ddellacosta 1y agoGotcha, thank you both, I totally missed this
- landl0rd 1y agoThe price tag on this stuff, in human capital, data, and hardware, is high enough to preclude that sort of “perfect competition” environment. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
- petesergeant 1y ago> The price tag on this stuff, in human capital, data, and hardware, is high enough to preclude that sort of “perfect competition” environment. I feel like we right now live in that perfect competition environment though. Inference is mostly commoditized, and it’s a race to the bottom for price and latency. I don’t think any of the big providers are making super-normal profit, and are probably discounting inference for access to data/users.
- ath92 1y agoOnly because everyone believes it’s a winner takes all game and this perfect competition will only last for as long as the winner hasn’t come out on top yet.
- petesergeant 1y ago> everyone believes it’s a winner takes all game Why would anyone think that, and why do you think everyone thinks that?
- mlazos 1y agoEveryone always thinks this at least in big tech I’ve never heard a PM or exec say a market is not winner take all. It’s some weird corpo grift lang that nothing is worth doing unless its winner take all.
- TheOtherHobbes 1y agoBecause tech is now a handful of baronial oligopolies, and the AI companies are fighting to be the next generation of same. And this pattern has repeated itself reliably since the industrial revolution. Successful ASI would essentially end this process, because after ASI there's nowhere else for humans to go (in tech at least.)
- Quarrelsome 1y agothey did say "accidentally". I find that people doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is often the best case outcome.
- jrm4 1y agoOh, absolutely -- I definitely meant that in the least complimentary way possible :). In a way, it's just the triumph of the ideals of "open source," -- sharing is better for everyone, even Zuck, selfishly.
- mmmeff 1y agoThe moment Meta produces something competitive with OpenAI is the moment they stop releasing the weights and rebrand from Llama. Mark my words.