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Open source AI is the path forward

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Re: Open source AI is the path forward

#511

Post by derefr »

solarmist wrote: post #446
_heimdall wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the dataset required for it to be open source? If I self host a project that is open sourced rather than paying for a hosted version, like Sentry.io for example, I don't expect data to come along with the code. Licensing rights are always up for debate in open source, but I wouldn't expect more than the code to be available and reviewable for anything needed to build and run the project. In the case of an LLM…

The sticking point is you can’t build the model. To be able to build the model from scratch you need methodology and a complete description of the data set. They only give you a blob of data you can run.

Compare/contrast:

DOOM-the-engine is open source (https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM), even though DOOM-the-asset-and-scenario-data is not. While you need a copy of DOOM-the-asset-and-scenario-data to "use DOOM to run DOOM", you are free to build other games using DOOM-the-engine.

Re: Open source AI is the path forward

#512

Post by wrs »

sailingparrot wrote: post #481
jononor wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to write all the code needed to do the modifications you are interested in. That is, there is no source code provided that can be used to make the modifications of interest. One also has to come up with suite le datasets, from scratch. Training setup and data is completely non trivial for a large language model. To replicate Llama would take hundreds of hours of engineering, at least.

> You have to write all the code needed to do the modifications you are interested in. That is, there is no source code provided that can be used to make the modifications of interest. Just like open source? > Training setup and data is completely non trivial for a large language model. To replicate Llama would take hundreds of hours of engineering, at least. The entire point of having the pre-trained weight released…

I think maybe we’re talking past each other because it seems obvious to me and others that the weights are the output of the compilation process, whereas you seem to think they’re the input. Whether you can fine tune the weights is irrelevant to whether you got all the materials needed to make them in the first place (i.e., the source).

I can do all sorts of things by “fine tuning” Excel with formulas, but I certainly don’t have the source for Excel.

Re: Open source AI is the path forward

#513

Post by swatcoder »

_heimdall wrote: post #436
stavros wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Open weights" means you can use the weights for free (as in beer). "Open source" means you get the training dataset and the methodology. ~Nobody does open source LLMs.

Why is the dataset required for it to be open source? If I self host a project that is open sourced rather than paying for a hosted version, like Sentry.io for example, I don't expect data to come along with the code. Licensing rights are always up for debate in open source, but I wouldn't expect more than the code to be available and reviewable for anything needed to build and run the project. In the case of an LLM…

The open source movement, from which the name derives, was about the freedom to make bespoke alterations to the software you choose to run. Provided you have reasonably widespread proficiency in industry standard tools, you can take something that's open source, modify that source, and rebuild/redeploy/reinterpret/re-whatever to make it behave the way that you want or need it to behave.

This is in contrast to a compiled binary or obfuscated source image, where alteration may be possible with extraordinairy skill and effort but is not expected and possibly even specirically discouraged.

In this sense, weights are entirely like those compiler binaries or obfuscated sources rather than the source code usually associated with "open source"

To be "open source" we would want LLM's where one might be able to manipulate the original training data or training algorithm to produce a set of weights more suited to one's own desires and needs.

Facebook isn't giving us that yet, and very probably can't. They're just trading on the weird boundary state of the term "open source" -- it still carries prestige and garners good will from its original techno-populist ideals, but is so diluted by twenty years of naive consumers who just take it to mean "I don't have to pay to use this" that the prestige and good will is now misplaced.

Re: Open source AI is the path forward

#514

Post by sailingparrot »

wrs wrote: post #506
sailingparrot wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it’s not the same as releasing a binary, feels like we can’t get out of the pedantics. I can in theory modify a binary to do whatever I want. In practice it is intractably hard to make any significant modification to a binary, and even if you could, you would then not be legally allowed to e.g. redistribute. Here, modifying that model is not harder that doing regular ML, and I can redistribute. Meta doesn’t have a…

Can you change the tokenizer? No, because all you have is the weights trained with the current tokenizer. Therefore, by any normal definition, you don’t have the source. You have a giant black box of numbers with no ability to reproduce it.

> Can you change the tokenizer?

Yes.

You can change it however you like, then look at the paper [1] under section 3.2. to know which hyperparameters were used during training and finetune the model to work with your new tokenizer using e.g. FineWeb [2] dataset.

You'll need to do only a fraction of the training you would have needed to do if you were to start a training from scratch for your tokenizer of choice. The weights released by Meta give you a massive head start and cost saving.

The fact that it's not trivial to do and out of reach of most consumer is not a matter of openness. That's just how ML is today.

[1]: https://scontent-sjc3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.2365-6/452387774_...

[2]: https://huggingface.co/datasets/HuggingFaceFW/fineweb

Re: Open source AI is the path forward

#515

Post by larodi »

stavros wrote: post #425
causal wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Open weights" is a more appropriate term but I'll point out that these weights are also largely inscrutable to the people with the code that trained it. And for licensing reasons, the datasets may not be possible to share. There is still a lot of modifying you can do with a set of weights, and they make great foundations for new stuff, but yeah we may never see a competitive model that's 100% buildable at home. Edit…

"Open weights" means you can use the weights for free (as in beer). "Open source" means you get the training dataset and the methodology. ~Nobody does open source LLMs.

Indeed, since when the deliverable being a jpeg/exe, which is similar to what the model file is, is considered the source? it is more like open result or freely available vm image, which works, but has its core FS scrambled or crypted.

Zuck knows this very well and it does him no honour to speak like, and from his position this equals attempt ate trying to change the present semantics of open source. Of course, others do that too - using the notion of open source to describe something very far from open.

What Meta is doing under his command can better be desdribed as releasing the resulting...build, so that it can be freely poked around and even put to work. But the result cannot be effectively reversed engineered.

Whats more ridiculous is that precisely because the result is not the source in its whole form, that these graphical structures can made available. Only thanks to the fact it is not traceable to the source, which makes the whole game not only closed, but like... sealed forever. An unfair retell of humanity's knowledge tossed around in very obscure container that nobody can reverse engineer.

how's that even remotely similar to open source?

Re: Open source AI is the path forward

#516

Post by _heimdall »

Xelynega wrote: post #508
_heimdall wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quite agree there. Based on other comments it sounds like Meta doesn't open source the code used to train the model, that would make it not open source in my book. The trained model doesn't need to be open source though, and frankly I'm not sure what the value there is specifically with regards to OSS. I'm not aware of a solution to interpretability problem, even if the model is shared we can't understand wha…

Wouldn't the "source code" of the model be closer to the source code of a compiler or the runtime library? IMO a pre-trained model given with the source code used to train/run it is analogous to a company shipping a compiler and a compiled binary without any of the source, which is why I don't think it's "open source" without the training data.

You really should be able to train a model on whatever data you choose to use though.

Training data instead source code at all, it's content fed into the ingestion side to train a model. As long as source for ingedting and training a model is available, which it sounds like isn't the case for Meta, that would be open source as best I understand it.

Said a little differently, I would need to be able to review all code used to generate a model and all code used to query the model for it to be OSS. I don't need Meta's training data or their actual model at all, I can train my own with code that I can fully audit and modify if I choose to.

Re: Open source AI is the path forward

#517

Post by meroes »

warkdarrior wrote: post #405
spiralk wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its certainly not altruism. Given that Facebook/Meta owns the largest user data collection systems, any advancement in AI ultimately strengthens their business model (which is still mostly collecting private user data, amassing large user datasets, and selling targeting ads). There is a demo video that shows a user wearing a Quest VR headset and asks the AI "what do you see" and it interprets everything around it. Th…

That sounds fantastic. If they make the Meta headset easy to wear and somewhat fashionable (closer to eyeglass than to a motorcycle helmet), I'd take it everywhere and record everything. Give me a retrospective search and conferences/meetings will be so much easier (I am terrible with names).

I wouldn’t even say hi alone my name to someone wearing a Meta headset out in public. And if facial recognition becomes that common for wearers, most of the population is going to adorn something to prevent that. And if it’s at work, I’m not working there and I have to think many would agree. Coworkers don’t and wouldn’t tolerate coworkers taking videos or pictures of them.

Re: Open source AI is the path forward

#518

Post by drcode »

hubraumhugo wrote: post #112

The big winners of this: devs and AI startups - No more vendor lock-in - Instead of just wrapping proprietary API endpoints, developers can now integrate AI deeply into their products in a very cost-effective and performant way - Price race to the bottom with near-instant LLM responses at very low prices are on the horizon As a founder, it feels like a very exciting time to build a startup as your product automatical…

and Xi Jingping

Re: Open source AI is the path forward

#519

Post by photonthug »

CardenB wrote: post #22
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #7

“The Heavy Press Program was a Cold War-era program of the United States Air Force to build the largest forging presses and extrusion presses in the world.” This ”program began in 1944 and concluded in 1957 after construction of four forging presses and six extruders, at an overall cost of $279 million. Six of them are still in operation today, manufacturing structural parts for military and commercial aircraft” [1].…

Doubtful that GPUs purchased today would be in use for a similar time scale. Govt investment would also drive the cost of GPUs up a great deal. Not sure why a publicly accessible GPU cluster would be a better solution than the current system of research grants.

> Not sure why a publicly accessible GPU cluster would be a better solution than the current system of research grants.

You mean a better solution than different teams paying AWS over and over, potentially spending 10x on rent rather than using all that cash as a down payment on actually owning hardware? I can't really speak for the total costs of depreciation/hardware maintenance but renting forever isn't usually a great alternative to buying.

Re: Open source AI is the path forward

#520

Post by nomel »

nothrowaways wrote: post #474
the8thbit wrote: post #12

"Eventually though, open source Linux gained popularity – initially because it allowed developers to modify its code however they wanted ..." I find the language around "open source AI" to be confusing. With "open source" there's usually "source" to open, right? As in, there is human legible code that can be read and modified by the user? If so, then how can current ML models be open source? They're very large matric…

Weight is the new code.

I think saying it's the new binary is closer to the truth. You can't reproduce it, but you can use it. In this new version, you can even nudge it a bit to do something a little different.

New stuff, so probably not good to force old words, with known meanings, onto new stuff.

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