Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, this is more of a PR stunt to advertise the Google Dev ecosystem than a contribution to open-source. I'm not complaining, just calling it what it is. Barely an improvement over the 5-month-old Mistral model, with the same context length of 8k. And this is a release after their announcement of Gemini Pro 1.5, which had an exponential increase in context length.
Who cares if it's a PR stunt to improve developer good will? It's still a good thing, and it's now the most open model out there.
It's more like a masterclass in corporate doublespeak. Google’s "transparency" is as clear as mud, with pretraining details thinner than their privacy protections. Diving into Google’s tech means auctioning off your privacy (and your users' privacy) to the highest bidder.
Their "open source" embrace is more of a chokehold, with their tech biases and monopolistic strategies baked into every line of code. Think of it as Google's way of marking territory - every developer is a fire hydrant.
These megacorps aren’t benevolent patrons of open source; they're self-serving giants cloaking power grabs under the guise of "progress".
Use these products at your own risk. If these companies wanted to engage in good faith, they'd use Apache or MIT licensing and grant people the agency and responsibility for their own use and development of software. Their licenses are designed to mitigate liability, handcuff potential competitors, and eke every last drop of value from users, with informed consent frequently being an optional afterthought.
That doesn't even get into the Goodharting of metrics and actual performance of the models; I highly doubt they're anywhere near as good as Mistral.
The UAE is a notoriously illiberal authoritarian state, yet even they have released AI models far more free and open than Google or Meta. https://huggingface.co/tiiuae/falcon-40b/blob/main/README.md
If it’s not Apache or MIT, (or even some flavor of GPL,) it’s not open source; it’s a trojan horse. These "free" models come at the cost of your privacy and freedoms.
These models aren't Open or Open Access or Free unless you perform the requisite mental gymnastics cooked up by their marketing and legal teams. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Gemma is doubleplusgood.