There is a history of battles between open source and proprietary (or closed) systems in software technology. There is a tendency to hoard the most important tools that could shape tomorrow’s computing platforms. Some other companies opt for giving those tools away. The most popular example is that of Google’s open source Android mobile operating system. It challenged the Apple’s dominating position in the field of smart phones.
Meta is the company from Silicon valley that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatApp. It has created AI technology LLaMA that can power online chatbots. LLaMA stands for ‘large language model Meta AI’. LLMs pinpoint patterns in text and generate text of their own. LLMs are systems that learn skills by analysing vest amounts of text (including books), Wikipedia articles and chat logs. ChatGPT and Bard are built on top of LLMs. Instead of keeping the technology to itself, Meta has released the computer code underlying the system. Those whose email addresses are with Meta could download the source code after vetting by Meta.
In essence, it is making its AI open source software. It makes the software freely copiable, modifiable and amenable to reuse. It will give capability to public at large to build chatbots of their own very quickly.
One of the godfathers of AI, Yann LeCun (the other two were Geoffrey Hinton and Youshua Bengio) is the chief scientist of Meta. LeCun has declared that Facebook’s AI will be an open source platform. Thus Meta has taken a different approach from its rivals. Meta supremo Zuckerberg considers this to be a smart thing to do. This approach could be contrasted with Google and OpenAI which are in the AI race. They are being increasingly secretive about the methods and software that underlie their AI products. In fact, they are critical of the unfettered open source approach of Meta. It could adversely affect the job market. It can lead to the misuse of AI technology. Meta feels that keeping the code to itself is a ‘huge mistake’. LeCun feels that the technology will be widely welcome when it is outside the control of companies like Google and Meta.
Meta has invested in AI technology for nearly a decade. It has spent billions of dollars building the software and hardware needed to realise chatbots and other generative AI. It has worked behind the scenes to infuse its other products with AI. Zuckerberg wants Meta to be a leader in AI space.