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0 pointsdiggan1y ago0 comments

> 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 data publicly available, could I train Llama 3.1 if I had the means? No wonder Zuckerberg doesn't start with defining what Open Source actually means, as then the blogpost would have lost all meaning from the get go.

Just call it "Open Model" or something. As it stands right now, the meaning of Open Source is being diluted by all these companies pretending to doing one thing, while actually doing something else.

I initially got very exciting seeing the title and the domain, but hopelessly sad after reading through the article and realizing they're still trying to pass their artifacts off as Open Source projects.

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12 comments · 8 top-level

jdminhbg1y ago· 3 in thread

> 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 like that to me. What's important is you can download it, run it, modify it, and re-release it. Being able to see how the sausage was made would be interesting, but I don't think Meta have to show their training data any more than they are obligated to release their planning meeting notes for React development.

Edit: I think the restrictions in the license itself are good cause for saying it shouldn't be called Open Source, fwiw.

digganOP1y ago

> I don't think not releasing the commit history of a project makes it not Open Source,

Right, I'm not talking about the commit history, but rather that anyone (with means) should be able to produce the final artifact themselves, if they want. For weights like this, that requires at least the training script + the training data. Without that, it's very misleading to call the project Open Source, when only the result of the training is released.

> What's important is you can download it, run it, modify it, and re-release it

But I literally cannot download the project, build it and run it myself? I can only use the binaries (weights) provided by Meta. No one can modify how the artifact is produced, only modify the already produced artifact.

That's like saying that Slack is Open Source because if I want to, I could patch the binary with a hex editor and add/remove things as I see fit? No one believes Slack should be called Open Source for that.

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thenoblesunfish1y ago

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.

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tempfile1y ago

For the freedom to change to be effective, a user must be given the software in a form they can modify. Can you tweak an LLM once it's built? (I genuinely don't know the answer)

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valine1y ago· 1 in thread

The codebase to do the training is way less valuable than the weights for the vast majority of people. Releasing the training code would be nice, but it doesn't really help anyone but Meta's direct competitors.

If you want to train on top of Llama there's absolutely nothing stopping you. Plenty of open source tools to do parameter optimization.

digganOP1y ago

Not just the training code but the training data as well, should be under a permissive license, otherwise you cannot call the project itself Open Source, which Facebook does here.

> is way less valuable than the weights for the vast majority of people

The same is true for most Open Source projects, most people use the distributed binaries or other artifacts from the projects, and couldn't care less about the code itself. But that doesn't warrant us changing the meaning of Open Source just because companies feel like it's free PR.

> If you want to train on top of Llama there's absolutely nothing stopping you.

Sure, but in order for the intent of Open Source to be true for Llama, I should be able to build this project from scratch. Say I have a farm of 100 A100's, could I reproduce the Llama model from scratch today?

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elromulous1y ago

100%. With this licensing model, meta gets to reap the benefits of open source (people contributing, social cachet), without any of the real detriment (exposing secret sauce).

hbn1y ago

Is that even something they keep on hand? Or would WANT to keep on hand? I figured they're basically sending a crawler to go nuts reading things and discard the data once they've trained on it.

If that included, e.g. reading all of Github for code, I wouldn't expect them to host an entire separate read-only copy of Github because they trained on it and say "this is part of our open source model"

vngzs1y ago

Agreed. The Linux kernel source contains everything you need to produce Linux kernel binaries. The llama source does not contain what you need to produce llama models. Facebook is using sleight of hand to garner favor with open model weights.

Open model weights are still commendable, but it's a far cry from open-source (or even libre) software!

unraveller1y ago

Open-weights is not open-source, for sure, but I don't mind it being stated as an aspiration goal, the moment it is legally possible to publish a source without shooting themselves in the foot they should do it.

They could release 50% of their best data but that would only stop them from attracting the best talent.

blcknight1y ago

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)

JeremyNT1y ago

> Why do people keep mislabeling this as Open Source?

I guess this is a rhetorical question, but this is a press release from Meta itself. It's just a marketing ploy, of course.

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12 comments · 8 top-level

jdminhbg1y ago· 3 in thread

Edit: I think the restrictions in the license itself are good cause for saying it shouldn't be called Open Source, fwiw.

digganOP1y ago

> I don't think not releasing the commit history of a project makes it not Open Source,

> What's important is you can download it, run it, modify it, and re-release it

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thenoblesunfish1y ago

1 more reply

tempfile1y ago

For the freedom to change to be effective, a user must be given the software in a form they can modify. Can you tweak an LLM once it's built? (I genuinely don't know the answer)

1 more reply

valine1y ago· 1 in thread

If you want to train on top of Llama there's absolutely nothing stopping you. Plenty of open source tools to do parameter optimization.

digganOP1y ago

Not just the training code but the training data as well, should be under a permissive license, otherwise you cannot call the project itself Open Source, which Facebook does here.

> is way less valuable than the weights for the vast majority of people

> If you want to train on top of Llama there's absolutely nothing stopping you.

3 more replies

elromulous1y ago

100%. With this licensing model, meta gets to reap the benefits of open source (people contributing, social cachet), without any of the real detriment (exposing secret sauce).

hbn1y ago

Is that even something they keep on hand? Or would WANT to keep on hand? I figured they're basically sending a crawler to go nuts reading things and discard the data once they've trained on it.

vngzs1y ago

Open model weights are still commendable, but it's a far cry from open-source (or even libre) software!

unraveller1y ago

They could release 50% of their best data but that would only stop them from attracting the best talent.

blcknight1y ago

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)

JeremyNT1y ago

> Why do people keep mislabeling this as Open Source?

I guess this is a rhetorical question, but this is a press release from Meta itself. It's just a marketing ploy, of course.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse