6 ms·

Most probably believe this is a good thing, but don't want to give Zuckerberg credit because a) he's had a profoundly negative impact on society and b) the stra

• cataphract 2mo ago
  Only the AI labs are really interested in closed models. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, ... they'd rather go back to doing stock buybacks and being ridiculously profitable rather than raising capital for all this research and datacenters. They only do it because they think they have to.
  • mcmcmc 2mo ago
    The alternative is ceding the leading edge to China and being dependent on them to continue releasing advances
    • skohan 2mo ago
      Isn't this meta release kind of a counterexample to that?
    • chrsw 2mo ago
      We did this with manufacturing and industrial build outs over the last 4 decades or so. It worked out very well for capital, not well for labor. One could make the argument we can do the same for AI. Let China build the models and we capture the value somewhere in the layers above. I think that’s a terrible idea but financially it makes just as much sense as offshoring labor and manufacturing, if not more.
      • TheOtherHobbes 2mo ago
        Manufacturing was never strategic. (That was irony, by the way.)
        • ignoramous 2mo ago
          > That was irony Sarcasm or irony?
    • DrewADesign 2mo ago
      So, if they got ahead of us by whatever arbitrary measure someone pretends is objective, then suddenly our stuff… what… stops working? Does it say somewhere in the big book of AI rules that the first entity to beat the US AI companies would be in charge now, and we’d have to stop doing our own research and development and start using their shit exclusively? I don’t get the argument.
  • mrDmrTmrJ 2mo ago
    If the leading model companies aren't profitable long-term, how do we get the money to continually spend on more research and more compute? I get that plenty of people don't like big corporations or stock buybacks or certain CEOs, which is fine. But as someone who wants to see AGI happen FASTER, I really want to see a clear financial reason for maximal AGI investment. If the model labs aren't clearly profitable, or open source models eat all the 'model layer' profit - what financial force will push forward very expensive experiments/scaling, etc.?
    • munk-a 2mo ago
      > If the model labs aren't clearly profitable, or open source models eat all the 'model layer' profit - what financial force will push forward very expensive experiments/scaling, etc.? It's hype - when the hype dies the great push will slow. My hypothesis is that we'll end up with something like Seti@Home where continued model training gets outsourced to a benevolent appearing product (something like what OpenAI started out as). If I were to bet - Europe and Canada seem best poised (especially the latter) to produce an AGI initiative with a strong ethical focus.
    • makingstuffs 2mo ago
      Out of curiosity why do you want AGI to ‘happen FASTER’?
    • failbuffer 2mo ago
      Why do you think your life will be better with AGI?
    • sanderjd 2mo ago
      What I think is that something the "exponential scaling to AGI" thesis pays too little attention to is resource constraints, and that this is the answer to your question. What will happen if it becomes difficult to sustain the investment of resources necessary to continuously train newer and better models is that the s-curve will start to inflect toward plateau, just like any other technology.
    • nradov 2mo ago
      That's a non sequitur. While the frontier LLMs are quite useful for many tasks there's no reliable evidence that scaling them up will ever produce a true AGI. More likely some other fundamental research breakthroughs will be needed, and those breakthroughs won't necessarily come from the current leading companies. I doubt that more money would be necessary or even helpful in that.
• waffletower 2mo ago
  While Zuck's contributions are probably overwhelmingly more negative than positive, Meta initiated both pytorch and llama which have had profoundly positive effects on AI research. And I really am not a fan of python :D
  • bigfishrunning 2mo ago
    Yes, but have those positive effects on AI research had a positive or negative effect on society? I guess time will tell
  • jmalicki 2mo ago
    pytorch is really mostly C++ after all, you don't have to use it with python. Python just allows you to use it like "normal code", whereas if you program it in C++ you really get exposed to what's under the hood and can't write "normal code"
  • numpad0 2mo ago
    Wasn't LLaMA or Llama 2 the first ever open weight LLM through a leak, and weren't there speculations that Zuckerberg himself might be involved in it? He does seem like a good-ish guy at the most crucial moments of truths.
    • magicalist 2mo ago
      > Wasn't LLaMA or Llama 2 the first ever open weight LLM through a leak No > and weren't there speculations that Zuckerberg himself might be involved in it and no. Meta legal was issuing DMCA notices within days (so, plenty of time for execs, including Zuckerberg, to sign off on, or even propose, that strategy). > He does seem like a good-ish guy at the most crucial moments of truths. Does he? I can't seem to recall any particular crucial moments that revealed any underlying character there.
    • dragonwriter 2mo ago
      > Wasn't LLaMA or Llama 2 the first ever open weight LLM through a leak No. GPT-2, I think, was the first, four(ish) years before Llama, and there were a bunch in between GPT-2 and the Llama leak and later open release. The Llama leak was a substantial leap forward in capacity for local LLMs, but not the first, and it wasn’t open. The open licensed release was Llama 2 several months after the Llama leak.
• pjmlp 2mo ago
  If only folks did the same in regards to React adoption....
• baron816 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  • windexh8er 2mo ago
    The "legacy media" is not a single individual who has total control of billions of dollars in capital to do whatever they want at the drop of a hat. You're conflating two very different issues. Zuckerberg deserves all of the negative attention he draws, and I'd argue that his spotlight is his own doing. He, individually, could choose to do good at the global level. He chooses not to. That, to me, means that your finger pointing is inverted. "Legacy media" may have had that level of influence in the past but properties like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp now hold those cards. One can only hope Zuckerberg ends up being displaced in the same way.
    • baron816 2mo ago
      Rupert Murdoch absolutely is capable of doing all that. He’s absolutely done far more harm globally than Zuckerberg.
      • windexh8er 2mo ago
        The concentration of media target for Murdoch (now: Lachlan Murdoch) is nowhere near Zuck's reach. Meta has 3.6B daily active users vs 1.5-3M viewers in Fox / primetime. Has he done more harm as through the perspective of time? Probably, but you'd be kidding yourself if you don't think Zuckerberg will be the more evil of the two if he exits control around the same age as Murdoch. Zuckerberg is only getting started and he's capable of destroying Murdoch if he so chooses. We know that the Murdoch empire knows they are losing ground as well - which is why they need to acquire a platform like Roku [0]. But honestly the legacy of Murdoch may end up closer aligned to Succession than the empire that Zuck has under his finger. Also Zuckerberg has global influence that's unrivaled, Murdoch has contributed all of his efforts to erosion within, mostly, NAM. TL;DR - Zuck is worth 9-10x more than Murdoch ($211B vs $21B) and reaches 20-30x more people (3.6B vs 3M) on the daily. A 20% drawdown of Meta swallows TWO Murdoch empires with a hell of a lot of spare change. [0] https://theankler.com/lachlan-murdochs-fox-roku-surprise-and-who-survives-the-shakeup/ https://theankler.com/lachlan-murdochs-fox-roku-surprise-and...
• timClicks 2mo ago
  Facebook used the same strategy to compete with Google Maps. The company became one of the biggest contributors to OpenStreetMap, which everyone has benefited from downstream.
• alex1138 2mo ago
  I can't get over his negative externalities Just like closed AI vs open AI, his views on the covid situation might be fine in a bubble (though even with AI they have apparently lied about Llama's benchmarks) but it's one of these, "that's the hill you choose to die on?" - not Free Basics - not dubious privacy settings - not 'dumb fucks' and ConnectU - not... I don't know. It's like robbing a bank while telling anyone in earshot it's offensive how long the hold times are on the phone for the bank He's seen with suspicion and rightly so Edit: and the fact his site doesn't work. Posts don't work https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14147719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14147719 and messages don't work (forced encryption with Messenger, and, although this is an old link, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6090712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6090712)
• godelski 2mo ago
  > it's not out of principle. There's a bunch of influencers who go help struggling people. I'm certain the majority of them aren't doing it out of principle, but at the end of the day people still get helped. I'd certainly rather things be done out of principle, but depending on what question you're concerned with that might not matter. There's also a clear hierarchy, but motivations are distinct from effect. The inverse of this is that lots of harm has happened from people with the best of motivations. I'd wager most evil in the world is created by men who would see themselves as good. With Zuckerberg I think it isn't too hard. Clearly this is a business move, not a moral one. The motivation is wrong, BUT the effect is good. I think more open source models is better for the world. Closed source is also a business move and limits innovation as well as prevents people from interrogating safety. But there's valid arguments on either end. My point more is that we can be nuanced. We should be nuanced. The world isn't black and white. The people making these decisions are neither demons nor gods and shouldn't be treated as such. My biggest fear is that if we resort to criticizing no matter what then those in power will just learn to ignore us. If they can do no good and only do wrong then there's no reason for them to do good (besides morals, but let's not pretend that's enough, even if it should be)
  • anigbrowl 2mo ago
    There's a bunch of influencers who go help struggling people. I'm certain the majority of them aren't doing it out of principle, but at the end of the day people still get helped. I don't know for sure, but I suspect it's like a lot of other things on the internet, with a bimodal distribution between people who get helped a lot ('Sir Hype surprises homeless former billionaire with a MILLION DOLLARS!') with many other similarly deserving people getting nothing. I prefer systems with a lot of people who get helped sufficiently to avoid hitting rock bottom in the first place. Besides the fact that these undertakings are about promoting the benefactor (and the near certainty that some of these professional philanthropists will later turn out to devils LARPing as angels), it also makes the determination of moral worthiness turn on the public's fickle opinion about whether the recipient is sufficiently beautiful/ ugly/ unlucky/ desperate/ degraded enough to qualify. Charitable undertakings involving cameras are always a bit suspect.
• danielrhodes 2mo ago
  Open models are a good thing. OpenAI was open until it became obvious that being open was not going to pay for training costs and wouldn't help them get a competitive edge. I'd bet that if Meta gets to a place where their model is in a similar position, they will also become more closed. But right now, Meta is open because that is what weakens and creates the most contrast with the other AI labs. It's the same with any open source project: it starts open, then it becomes clear that maintaining it is not cheap and takes up a lot of time. The developers create a hosted/paid version to pay for their time, and to create an incentive to use the hosted/paid version they start releasing closed source enhancements. After that the open source version becomes marketing where new projects use the OSS version and then upgrade once their needs become more sophisticated.
• pc86 2mo ago
  You can tell how intellectually honest someone is when someone they hate makes a good point. It's possible to dislike (or even hate) Zuckerberg and understand that he's making a good point for selfish motives, and still want that thing as well. Instead you see several comments here twisting themselves into pretzels trying to explain how ackshually open models are bad now. I don't care if this helps Zuckerberg because it helps everyone.
  • 24t 2mo ago
    The model release is nice. I won't sing their praises for it because that plays into the long term strategy of a company I despise. Is that intellectually dishonest?
    • pc86 2mo ago
      It depends on if you can say things like "it is good they are supporting this" or "I'm glad they're doing this" or "good for them" without having to couch it in a bunch of stuff about how terrible they are.
      • magicalist 2mo ago
        > It depends on if you can say things like "it is good they are supporting this" or "I'm glad they're doing this" or "good for them" without having to couch it in a bunch of stuff about how terrible they are. That is a weird definition of intellectual honesty. If you hold both of those opinions, what's wrong with stating them both? If the answer has to do with the rhetorical effect, that seems a lot harder to justify as intellectual dishonesty, but I don't want to put words in your mouth.
  • tqi 2mo ago
    >the strategy is transparent, he's trying to commoditize his closed rivals TBF, I think the same can be said for something like Apple's "commitment" to privacy, in that their own ads business never took off so they leaned into their edge over Google.
  • Foobar8568 2mo ago
• jamesrr39 2mo ago
  > he's trying to commoditize his closed rivals, it's not out of principle To be fair Meta/Facebook does have quite a strong open source history; React (Native), PyTorch, Btrfs, zstd, etc. It didn't just start here with AI models.
• mcbuilder 2mo ago
  Yeah, I feel like we bigly lose to China if we don't.
• strtok 2mo ago
  Unless weights are being manipulated to make the model respond in a way that favors the owners.
• razster 2mo ago
  This can be said for a lot of different matters. Reading this gave me some Déjà vu vibes. My personal take, I don't see this as a good thing. Yes I dislike META with a passion and will refuse to use this model or allow it in any of my workflows. So I guess I may never know, which I'm ok with that.
• lukeschlather 2mo ago
  The "commoditize his closed rivals" line of reasoning doesn't make sense to me. That doesn't sound like a business decision, it sounds potentially spiteful? But that's ascribing malice to what could just as easily be explained by good faith. Meta doesn't really offer any profit-making AI product, so I don't understand what commoditizing it buys them in this narrative. You could argue they rely on AI and so want it to be a cheap commodity - but that is not harming their rivals, that is just a different way of stating that Meta is engaging in something that enables people to collectively work for mutual benefit, which is not a nefarious plot against rivals, it is laudable cooperative behavior.
  • blablablerg 2mo ago
    To ascribe good faith here to Zuckerberg is quite the leap considering his history. Why are his main products basically walled gardens then? It is a business decision to open source his models, because he has been behind the curve from the start. Do you believe if he had chatGPT, he would open source/weight it? I don't think so, he would treat it like Instagram. The point is, AI/LLMs are seen as the next frontier. If one of the closed ones becomes dominant, then that company can use its user base to attack Zuckerberg's platforms. That google failed with google+, does not mean the next competitor will. A telling sign is how he integrated his AI into whatsapp. It seems out of place to me to have an LLM integrated into whatsapp, but he desperately wants a part of the AI cake.
• starkshift 2mo ago
  The essential principle of free market economics is that good things may be done for selfish reasons and that this in itself is actually good
• deaton 2mo ago
  If everyone did good things for selfish reasons, the world would be a much better place than it is.