The path to open-sourcing the DeepSeek inference engine

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 12:44 AM UTC

nodja wrote: post #21

avodonosov wrote: post #17

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…

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…

Post by WiSaGaN » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 2:14 AM UTC

xwolfi wrote: post #27

avodonosov wrote: post #17

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…

Well Deepseek's survival also depends on the giant amount of hype they can generate, and they won't get more investor money just by having done a one-hit wonder. Becoming deeply integrated in the AI ecosystem with various tools and innovative discoveries will most like be more beneficial than protecting the secrets of their first success.

Post by golergka » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 3:24 AM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #34

londons_explore wrote: post #24

"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…

Post by esperent » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 4:13 AM UTC

anon373839 wrote: post #36

avodonosov wrote: post #17

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…

Post by andai » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 5:14 AM UTC

esperent wrote: post #37

anon373839 wrote: post #36

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…