Why? All three of those companies have an obvious and outspoken commitment to releasing models for free, they aren't trying to manipulate fear to sell a product like OpenAI.

Microsoft is invested in OpenAI. Have they released any open weight models themselves?

Apple is similarly partnering with OpenAI.

Google has released nerfed versions of its Gemini models (Gemma 2B and Gemma 7B).

It seems the only company truly setting an example for open weights is Meta. Hopefully the other companies realize that it’s in their best interest to do the same (as it seems Google is begrudgingly realizing with its nerfed releases).

Eventually open weights will win, and if OpenAI (the most ironically named company) continues to rely on closed models as its moat, it will lose.

“AI” is much more than LLMs…

Not only have all three of these companies released LLM model weights, Google and Microsoft especially have released nearly countless model architectures, weights, evaluation/training/inference/etc frameworks, toolkits, etc across an extremely wide spectrum.

They mainly offer open tooling to help you adopt their closed-source tech (e.g. RAG frameworks) but you don't get the freedom to do what you want with the model (which is the core).

At some point, these big companies may even want to put more regulation or restrictions on their open-weights / open-source competitors. "Hey this is not validated for safety, you can use only Gemini"

They don't? Microsoft and Google both promote Open Source inferencing frameworks, and while both also have proprietary products I think it's completely dishonest to say they "mainly" support them. ONNX and Tensorflow have been supported longer and more productively than any of the closed-source AI frameworks Google or Microsoft offer.

Let’s see what the future holds.

I’m feeling that the next step will be for regulators to start restricting more and more open-source/open-weight LLMs (and their equivalent Diffusion models), in the name of safety.

Perhaps requiring certifications in professional use for example.

I see it as a happy coincidence for these large players if this is the case, because only folks with large pockets and the right thoughts will be able to get certified.

You are currently posting in a thread where the root article is a press release detailing why open weight LLMs aren't going to get restricted by the incumbents. I also have seen no indication that any president-hopefuls intend to regulate the tech either. There are no demonstrated dangers yet, the value of exporting this digital snake-oil far outweighs the cost of other people asking ChatGPT how to make a fertilizer bomb.

Yes exactly, I’m saying: good it is like that, because in the future it may change because of lobbyists (see above why)

> Apple is similarly partnering with OpenAI.

I think this is too generous of an interpretation for their deal.

> Microsoft is invested in OpenAI. Have they released any open weight models themselves?

Phi-3?

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/phi-3

> Microsoft is invested in OpenAI. Have they released any open weight models themselves?

Do the Phi series models not count?

Sure they do. I was genuinely asking.

Well then yes, I would definitely say Phi. And on top of that Microsoft has been releasing a ton of the tooling surrounding LLMs and AI as well, including Semantic Kernel.

Really makes me wonder what the angle here is for them. With open source, I can somewhat understand given market standards become easier to hire for and you get feedback on your tooling. It seems unlikely that either will be true for open-weight models. It also seems unlikely they would be able to establish market domination and then increase prices if everything remains open.

In all three cases, they own hardware (Apple in a slightly different sense) that they'd love for you to pay to run your favorite models on, open or closed.

Sorry, I’m no JD Vance fan but what on earth do you mean he was installed by Silicon Valley? Who installed him, and where did they install him to? Do you mean “Silicon Valley” installed him as Trump’s VP pick? Or just that SV installed him as one of two senators from Ohio — in which case, how did they do that, and more importantly why would they choose a senator from Ohio instead of California?

I know Vance is friendly to SV but the idea that there’s some nefarious shadow council of SV tech nerds installing politicians into nebulous places without the public or opposition being generally aware of it is preposterous.

GP is likely referring to Peter Thiel’s circle. Cance worked for Thiel for a little while. Here is a detailed article on their involvement in the Vance selection: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/07/28/jd-vanc...

By SV, I think he might mean Peter Thiel and his associates: https://archive.is/1oVs2

"Narya was backed with about $100mn from Thiel and a cadre of his acquaintances, including former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt and prominent venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Scott Dorsey."

you can just search keywords: jd vance + thiel and educate yourself, it is well known

The Elon and Thiel gang, they are not pro "SV" insomuch as being pro Thiel/Elon oligopolies. If open source AI one day threatens their livelihoods and career, the tune from the WH will change overnight. Right now the SV conservatives are playing catch up on AI so they are happy to push for laissez-faire instead of regulatory capture. I won't be suprised that should the cost of running and finetuning FB Llama models become so cheap that they start to eat into x.ai's business, all of a sudden AI is a massive national security issue and AI safety academics will go back to regurgitating talking points about imaginatory AGI terminator bots.