I accuse you of being disingenuous. Zuckerberg’s points seems pretty clear to me: from his experience in the closed Apple system, he understands the benefits to developers and end users of having an open system. (Obviously Apple benefits from their closed system; I bet he never feigned confusion about why they impose such restrictions.) ChatGPT and other popular LLMs are closed like the iOS, so he intends Llama to be open like Android/Linux, or if you feel the inscrutable nature of the models precludes that, open like Windows.
The bit about America’s advantage being “decentralized and open innovation” of course involves a bit of rah-rah jingoism, but it’s a coherent claim: what developers are free to create with open systems like the one he wishes to establish benefits America more than China, even if China would also benefit.
Your “which is it?” suggests you think there is some contradiction to resolve. Developers have a few different options right now, but the reasonable choices are all closed, and if they invest too much time and effort into those, the result of network effects will cause Meta to suffer from essentially vendor lock-in. Hence the need to have an open system that even if not quite as good as the best, is close enough that the flexibility and control that the openness offers makes up for the shortfall.
Zuckerberg’s also clearly not the Open Source Zealot you caricature him to be. The Quest is pretty good on openness, but its Horizon OS is not open source, and there are limitations on camera access, and Meta can still close down all sideloading capabilities at will.
Also, to engage in a little bit of mind-reading, Zuckerberg sees no enemies in China, only in OpenAI et al. through the “safety” regulation they can lobby the US government to enact. The plausible catastrophe to work against then is them getting as much of a stranglehold over the AI space as Apple has over its own. Of course, he can’t say this out loud without hastening the doom he’s trying to avert.
“Also, to engage in a little bit of mind-reading, Zuckerberg sees no enemies in China, only in OpenAI et al. through the “safety” regulation they can lobby the US government to enact.”
This is a reasonable position, apart from the fact that it is at odds with the situation on the ground. OpenAI are not lobbying the government in favour of SB 1047, nor are Anthropic or Google (afaik). It’s possible that in future they might, but other than Anthropic I think this is very unlikely.
For me, the idea of large AI companies using X-risk fears to shut down competition falls into the same category as the idea that large AI companies are using X-risk fears to hype their products. I think they are both interesting schemes that AI companies might be using in worlds that are not this one.
I accuse you of being disingenuous. Zuckerberg’s points seems pretty clear to me: from his experience in the closed Apple system, he understands the benefits to developers and end users of having an open system. (Obviously Apple benefits from their closed system; I bet he never feigned confusion about why they impose such restrictions.) ChatGPT and other popular LLMs are closed like the iOS, so he intends Llama to be open like Android/Linux, or if you feel the inscrutable nature of the models precludes that, open like Windows.
The bit about America’s advantage being “decentralized and open innovation” of course involves a bit of rah-rah jingoism, but it’s a coherent claim: what developers are free to create with open systems like the one he wishes to establish benefits America more than China, even if China would also benefit.
Your “which is it?” suggests you think there is some contradiction to resolve. Developers have a few different options right now, but the reasonable choices are all closed, and if they invest too much time and effort into those, the result of network effects will cause Meta to suffer from essentially vendor lock-in. Hence the need to have an open system that even if not quite as good as the best, is close enough that the flexibility and control that the openness offers makes up for the shortfall.
Zuckerberg’s also clearly not the Open Source Zealot you caricature him to be. The Quest is pretty good on openness, but its Horizon OS is not open source, and there are limitations on camera access, and Meta can still close down all sideloading capabilities at will.
Also, to engage in a little bit of mind-reading, Zuckerberg sees no enemies in China, only in OpenAI et al. through the “safety” regulation they can lobby the US government to enact. The plausible catastrophe to work against then is them getting as much of a stranglehold over the AI space as Apple has over its own. Of course, he can’t say this out loud without hastening the doom he’s trying to avert.
“Also, to engage in a little bit of mind-reading, Zuckerberg sees no enemies in China, only in OpenAI et al. through the “safety” regulation they can lobby the US government to enact.”
This is a reasonable position, apart from the fact that it is at odds with the situation on the ground. OpenAI are not lobbying the government in favour of SB 1047, nor are Anthropic or Google (afaik). It’s possible that in future they might, but other than Anthropic I think this is very unlikely.
For me, the idea of large AI companies using X-risk fears to shut down competition falls into the same category as the idea that large AI companies are using X-risk fears to hype their products. I think they are both interesting schemes that AI companies might be using in worlds that are not this one.