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Comment by _b | Hacker News Reader

Making advanced LLMs and releasing them for free like this is wonderful for the world. It saves a huge number of folks (companies, universities & individuals) vast amount of money and engineering time. It will enable many teams to do research and make products that they otherwise wouldn't be able to.

It is interesting to ponder to what extent this is just a strategic move by Meta to make more money in the end, but whatever the answer to that, it doesn't change how much I appreciate them doing it.

When AWS launched, I was similarly appreciative, as it made a lot of work a lot easier and affordable. The fact AWS made Amazon money didn't lower my appreciation of them for making AWS exist.

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I think it's a defense against anti-trust attacks. Bell Labs did a TON of this in 60's and 70's when they owned most of the phone lines, service contracts, AND TELEPHONES THEMSELVES in the USA.

I believe companies open source their research efforts as a thing to point to when regulators come so they can say "look at all the good our cash-faucet monopoly provides the economy!!"

Facebook can surely use the reputation points

In a free market economy everything is a strategic move to make the company more money. It's the nature of our incentive structure.

Most, but not all things are strategic moves.

Some moves are purely altruistic. Some moves are semi-altruistic - they don't harm the company, but help it increase its reputation or even just allows them to offer people ways to help in order to retain talent. (Which is also kind of strategic, but in a different way.)

Also, some things are just mistakes and miscalculations.

This, in my view it's a (very smart) move in response to OpenAI/Microsoft and Google having their cold war-esque standoff.

Following the analogy : Meta is arming the Open source community with okish (but in comparison to the soviets and Americans shoddy) weapons and push the third position politically.

Amazon meanwhile is basically a neutral arms manufacturer with AWS, and Nvidia owns the patent on "the projectile"

I'm not trying to biting the hand that arms me - so thank you very much Meta and Mister Zuckerberg.

Now someone, somewhere can create this eras version of Linux, hopefully under this eras version of the GPL.

>This, in my view it's a (very smart) move in response to OpenAI/Microsoft and Google having their cold war-esque standoff.

But Meta partnered with Microsoft for Llama 2.

Some degree of hedging is going to happen given that they're for-profit institutions and not nation states.

But yes I forced the analogy a bit hard :)

>Some moves are purely altruistic.

Like what?

Random example - various projects Google does that are basically to help the world, e.g. help forecast floods. https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/sustainability/floo...

Donating a kidney.

I think they mean when a for-profit company does it.

Even then. Nobody is perfect, not even companies.

Yes, that's true. But also vast majority of transactions are win-win for both sides, creating more wealth for everyone involved.

Only in a mythical marketplace are companies always rational.

Feed the open market, people add to the market, feed from the open market, profit

You have to agree to any terms they might think of in the future. Clicking download, they claim you agree to their privacy policy which they claim they can update on a whim

Google's privacy policy, for example, was updated stealthfully to let them claim rights over every piece of IP you post on the internet that their crawlers can get to

You agree to their privacy policy, and they can change the privacy policy. But if you have the model and don’t interact with them, then you don’t need to agree to future revisions because you aren’t interacting with them again (unless you want newer versions)

If I buy a TV, and the store has me sign a receipt that says I agree to their privacy policy by shopping there. Then that’s fine. I don’t need to agree to any future revisions unless I go back to buy more electronics from them.

> Google's privacy policy, for example, lets them claim rights over every piece of IP you post on the internet without protecting it behind a paywall

This is a nonsense. They added a disclaimer basically warning that LLMs might learn some of your personal data from the public web, because that’s part of the training data. A privacy policy is not a contract that you agree to, it’s just a notice of where/when your data is handled.

Google it. They're just laundering it through their ai first

No there’s no legal basis for any of this that even begins to make sense. It’s nothing but a bad-faith reading. Here’s the phrase in question:

“we use publicly available information to help train Google’s AI models”

That’s it.

The point being that such public information might include personal data about you and that’s fair game, it falls outside of the privacy policy. It’s not a novel claim, just a statement of fact.

“Wonderful for the world” = “I can exploit this to make money”

Exploit? I don’t know if this is the right perspective. It’s literally released for commercial use.

But also, nothing wrong with making money by building valuable new things.

To exploit means to use.

> “Wonderful for the world” = “I can [use] this to make money”

Doesn't change the meaning (or the bite) of the statement in the slightest.

Most financial transactions happen because the thing that is being bought improves the life of the buyer.

Would you say you are exploiting your employer by taking a salary?

What's your point, and what does Meta releasing an LLM that people can use have to do with employers and salaries?

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