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Open source AI is the path forward

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Re: Open source AI is the path forward

#181

Post by whimsicalism »

ygjb wrote: post #64
CardenB wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Of course they won't. The investment in the Heavy Press Program was the initial build, and just citing one example, the Alcoa 50,000 ton forging press was built in 1955, operated until 2008, and needed ~$100M to get it operational again in 2012. The investment was made to build the press, which created significant jobs and capital investment. The press, and others like it, were subsequently operated by and then sold…

there are many things i think are more capital constrained, if the government is trying to subsidize things.

Re: Open source AI is the path forward

#182

Post by thenoblesunfish »

jdminhbg wrote: post #169
diggan wrote: post #104

> Today we’re taking the next steps towards open source AI becoming the industry standard. We’re releasing Llama 3.1 405B, the first frontier-level open source AI model, Why do people keep mislabeling this as Open Source? The whole point of calling something Open Source is that the "magic sauce" of how to build something is publicly available, so I could built it myself if I have the means. But without the training d…

> Why do people keep mislabeling this as Open Source? The whole point of calling something Open Source is that the "magic sauce" of how to build something is publicly available, so I could built it myself if I have the means. But without the training data publicly available, could I train Llama 3.1 if I had the means? I don't think not releasing the commit history of a project makes it not Open Source, this seems lik…

You don't need to have the commit history to see "how it works". ML that works well does so in huge part due to the training data used. The leading models today aren't distinguished by the way they're trained, but what they're trained on.

Re: Open source AI is the path forward

#183

Post by wesleyyue »

Just added Llama 3.1 405B/70B/8B to https://double.bot (VSCode coding assistant) if anyone would like to try it.

---

Some observations:

* The model is much better at trajectory correcting and putting out a chain of tangential thoughts than other frontier models like Sonnet or GPT-4o. Usually, these models are limited to outputting "one thought", no matter how verbose that thought might be.

* I remember in Dec of 2022 telling famous "tier 1" VCs that frontier models would eventually be like databases: extremely hard to build, but the best ones will eventually be open and win as it's too important to too many large players. I remember the confidence in their ridicule at the time but it seems increasingly more likely that this will be true.

Re: Open source AI is the path forward

#184

Post by mvkel »

lolinder wrote: post #94
mvkel wrote: post #46

It's a real shame that we're still calling Llama "open source" when at best it's "open weights." Not that anyone would go buy 100,000 H100s to train their own Llama, but words matter. Definitions matter.

Source versus weights seems like a really pedantic distinction to make. As you say, the training code and training data would be worthless to anyone who doesn't have compute on the level that Meta does. Arguably, the weights are source code interpreted by an inference engine, and realistically it's the weights that someone is going to want to modify through fine-tuning, not the original training code and data. The fa…

> training code and training data would be worthless to anyone who doesn't have compute on the level that Meta does

I don't fully agree.

Isn't that like saying *nix being open source is worthless unless you're planning to ship your own Linux distro?

Knowing how the sausage is made is important if you're an animal rights activist.

Re: Open source AI is the path forward

#185

Post by myaccountonhn »

mattnewton wrote: post #70
rybosworld wrote: post #54

Huge companies like facebook will often argue for solutions that on the surface, seem to be in the public interest. But I have strong doubts they (or any other company) actually believe what they are saying. Here is the reality: - Facebook is spending untold billions on GPU hardware. - Facebook is arguing in favor of open sourcing the models, that they spent billions of dollars to generate, for free...? It follows th…

I actually think this is one of the rare times where the small guys interests are aligned with Meta. Meta is scared of a world where they are locked out of LLM platforms, one where OpenAI gets to dictate rules around their use of the platform much like Apple and Google dictates rules around advertiser data and monetization on their mobile platforms. Small developers should be scared of a world where the only competit…

> I actually think this is one of the rare times where the small guys interests are aligned with Meta

Small guys are the ones being screwed over by AI companies and having their text/art/code stolen without any attribution or adherence to license. I don’t think Meta is on their side at all

Re: Open source AI is the path forward

#186

Post by whimsicalism »

gpm wrote: post #79
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> better that the government removes IP on such technology for public use, like drugs got generics You want to punish NVIDIA for calling its shots correctly? You don't see the many ways that backfires?

No. But I do want to limit the amount we reward NVIDIA for calling the shots correctly to maximize the benefit to society. For instance by reducing the duration of the government granted monopolies on chip technology that is obsolete well before the default duration of 20 years is over. That said, it strikes me that the actual limiting factor is fab capacity not nvidia's designs and we probably need to lift the monop…

there is no such thing as a lump-sum transfer, this will shift expectations and incentives going forward and make future large capital projects an increasingly uphill battle

Re: Open source AI is the path forward

#187

Post by blcknight »

diggan wrote: post #104

> Today we’re taking the next steps towards open source AI becoming the industry standard. We’re releasing Llama 3.1 405B, the first frontier-level open source AI model, Why do people keep mislabeling this as Open Source? The whole point of calling something Open Source is that the "magic sauce" of how to build something is publicly available, so I could built it myself if I have the means. But without the training d…

InstructLab and the Granite Models from IBM seem the closest to being open source. Certainly more than whatever FB is doing here.

(Disclaimer: I work for an IBM subsidiary but not on any of these products)

Re: Open source AI is the path forward

#188

Post by [deleted] »

diggan wrote: post #104

> Today we’re taking the next steps towards open source AI becoming the industry standard. We’re releasing Llama 3.1 405B, the first frontier-level open source AI model, Why do people keep mislabeling this as Open Source? The whole point of calling something Open Source is that the "magic sauce" of how to build something is publicly available, so I could built it myself if I have the means. But without the training d…

[deleted]

Re: Open source AI is the path forward

#189

Post by jamiedg »

TechDebtDevin wrote: post #168
carimura wrote: post #115

Looks like you can already try out Llama-3.1-405b on Groq, although it's timing out. So. Hugged I guess.

All the big providers should have it up by end of day. They just change their API configs (they're just reselling you AWS Bedrock).

405B and the other Llama 3.1 models are working and available on Together AI. https://api.together.ai
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