41–50 of 69 posts
Kind of like how biological information is always trying to find new places to reproduce itself. Viruses and fungi do not come with Toss and EULAs. :)
What motivates the commercial AI companies to share their research results and know-how? Why did Google published the Transformer architecture instead of keeping it to themselves? I understand that people may want to do good things for humanity, facilitate progress, etc. But if an action goes against commercial interest, how can the company management take it and not get objections from shareholders? Or there is a co…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Or there is a commercial logic that motivates sharing of information and intellectual property? What logic is that? There absolutely is a sound commercial justification to share research: long-term growth through advancement of the field. (Deep learning would never have made the progress it has without open research!) If this seems quaint, it’s because we’re too accustomed to short-term, transactional, Wall Street…
It's not so much that it seems quaint, it's that we are accustomed to short-term, transactional, Wall Street thinking from companies like Google. For very good reason, because that's exactly how they behave in all other areas. The question remains, why do they appear altruistic when it comes to sharing papers? I find it hard to believe that it's actual altruism. It's far more likely that it's transactional behavior t…
I heard that Dodge v. Ford Motor Co. was an important precedent in the US. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately that's not really feasible in the current state of open source. There are enormous numbers of entitled users out there who become a parasitic drain on any project that is open sourced. Solo maintainers can theoretically just develop a think skin, but companies can actually find that the damage to their public image from not having their FOSS project in tip top shape is greater than the benefits of open…
You can always just disable issues and all other feedback channels. I judge companies on the state of their open source libraries, but it really depends on how the company positions it. Facebook pushed for react to become the default framework, so they deserve the scrutiny when it doesn’t hold up. However, with a clear disclaimer like that? I think that people would have different expectations.
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My understanding is that frontier researchers will work for companies that will let them publish papers and discuss them with their peers. When you're an engineer at the tier of these AI researchers, winning an extra 100k/year on top of you current 500k (numbers out of my ass) is not worth it vs getting name recognition. Being known as one of the authors that made the transformer for example will enable you work with…
> When you're an engineer at the tier of these AI researchers, winning an extra 100k/year on top of you current 500k (numbers out of my ass) is not worth it vs getting name recognition. Being known as one of the authors that made the transformer for example will enable you work with other bright minded individuals and create even better things. Also, instead of an extra 100k a year, you get to raise a billion dollars…
"We have something that would be of interest to the open source community, but it needs a lot of tidying to even run outside our company, and we don't have the manpower to properly maintain it when released". Plenty of companies are in this position. Please just open source anyway with a note saying "we won't be maintaining this, but feel free to fork!"
Unfortunately that's not really feasible in the current state of open source. There are enormous numbers of entitled users out there who become a parasitic drain on any project that is open sourced. Solo maintainers can theoretically just develop a think skin, but companies can actually find that the damage to their public image from not having their FOSS project in tip top shape is greater than the benefits of open…
Been there with AOSP, but that won't be changing anytime soon. I highly doubt noobs will learn the open source etiquette unfortunately.
What motivates the commercial AI companies to share their research results and know-how? Why did Google published the Transformer architecture instead of keeping it to themselves? I understand that people may want to do good things for humanity, facilitate progress, etc. But if an action goes against commercial interest, how can the company management take it and not get objections from shareholders? Or there is a co…
> Or there is a commercial logic that motivates sharing of information and intellectual property? What logic is that? There absolutely is a sound commercial justification to share research: long-term growth through advancement of the field. (Deep learning would never have made the progress it has without open research!) If this seems quaint, it’s because we’re too accustomed to short-term, transactional, Wall Street…
Might as well get some dubious medium term gain rather than spend a bunch of money on security for nothing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Or there is a commercial logic that motivates sharing of information and intellectual property? What logic is that? There absolutely is a sound commercial justification to share research: long-term growth through advancement of the field. (Deep learning would never have made the progress it has without open research!) If this seems quaint, it’s because we’re too accustomed to short-term, transactional, Wall Street…
It's not so much that it seems quaint, it's that we are accustomed to short-term, transactional, Wall Street thinking from companies like Google. For very good reason, because that's exactly how they behave in all other areas. The question remains, why do they appear altruistic when it comes to sharing papers? I find it hard to believe that it's actual altruism. It's far more likely that it's transactional behavior t…
What motivates the commercial AI companies to share their research results and know-how? Why did Google published the Transformer architecture instead of keeping it to themselves? I understand that people may want to do good things for humanity, facilitate progress, etc. But if an action goes against commercial interest, how can the company management take it and not get objections from shareholders? Or there is a co…
What motivates the commercial AI companies to share their research results and know-how? Why did Google published the Transformer architecture instead of keeping it to themselves? I understand that people may want to do good things for humanity, facilitate progress, etc. But if an action goes against commercial interest, how can the company management take it and not get objections from shareholders? Or there is a co…
Because they make their money from advertisements. Not their AI models. Same for Meta.
Compare that to e.g. OpenAI who's trying to make money from their AI models, and are thus underbid by Google and Meta.