In a previous post I asserted that Google is losing the AI race because of Innovators Dilemma and Engineering-Centric Search prioritized over Human-Centric Chat. I think Meta has a leg up over all AI companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Hugging Faces, etc., because:
i am not sure about China winning the LLM race. For one, when Chinese government said they supported AI, they meant industrial AI, not chat or entertainment focused AI like GenAI. i know for a fact Huawei and other chinese companies are looking to sponsor AI researches in US focusing away from a while back. (obviously that is no longer possible now). The argument for industrial AI is that China has FAR more industrial data than US given the size of Chinese manufacturing industry AND industrial AI would solve the upcoming demographic problem.
i have been following AI driving for a while, and i have experienced chinese AI driving in real life. i have to see their performance appears to be significantly better than tesla. One reason is the use of multiple sensors in AI including LIDAR which china has managed to bring the cost down so much it costs something like 700 bucks to have LIDAR all over the car. in the meantime, all US LIDAR companies are basically dead or on life support. i was very surprised US gov didn’t offer any help given the obvious military use of LIDAR.
i guess what i am saying is that LLM race is between private chinese companies without much government support vs. US companies with full backing of government. So i am betting on US winning the LLM/Gen race while China wins industrial AI race by default. Furthermore, Chinese companies’ access to consumer data are vastly overestimated by the west. The government has access, sure, but the government is not sharing that data, and there are mandate’s forbidden companies from using such data. if you violate that mandate, regardless of how big, you will be shut down overnight and banned. Didi(chinese uber) suffered this fate a while back.
I think one other reason why Meta is making Llama3 open source (more like open weighted) is about monetization. As the three large cloud infrastructure providers Microsoft is backing OpenAI, Amazon is backing Anthropic and Google has Gemini and they all come as pay per token service. This is a favorable set up for cloud providers. Meta doesn't have infrastructure monetizing business model. So, for Meta open sourcing their foundation model is a preemptive strike against the others to weaken their hand.
i am not sure about China winning the LLM race. For one, when Chinese government said they supported AI, they meant industrial AI, not chat or entertainment focused AI like GenAI. i know for a fact Huawei and other chinese companies are looking to sponsor AI researches in US focusing away from a while back. (obviously that is no longer possible now). The argument for industrial AI is that China has FAR more industrial data than US given the size of Chinese manufacturing industry AND industrial AI would solve the upcoming demographic problem.
i have been following AI driving for a while, and i have experienced chinese AI driving in real life. i have to see their performance appears to be significantly better than tesla. One reason is the use of multiple sensors in AI including LIDAR which china has managed to bring the cost down so much it costs something like 700 bucks to have LIDAR all over the car. in the meantime, all US LIDAR companies are basically dead or on life support. i was very surprised US gov didn’t offer any help given the obvious military use of LIDAR.
Thanks for your response. Yes China will take the lead on Industrial AI. But they definitely have skin in the game for Consumer AI. Tencent has been rolling out GenAI on WeChat for a while now, and WeChat has 1.4B users! https://www.zdnet.com/article/tencent-latest-to-join-chinas-genai-race-with-foundation-model-for-enterprises/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tencents-upgraded-llm-text-image-093000779.html
i guess what i am saying is that LLM race is between private chinese companies without much government support vs. US companies with full backing of government. So i am betting on US winning the LLM/Gen race while China wins industrial AI race by default. Furthermore, Chinese companies’ access to consumer data are vastly overestimated by the west. The government has access, sure, but the government is not sharing that data, and there are mandate’s forbidden companies from using such data. if you violate that mandate, regardless of how big, you will be shut down overnight and banned. Didi(chinese uber) suffered this fate a while back.
I think one other reason why Meta is making Llama3 open source (more like open weighted) is about monetization. As the three large cloud infrastructure providers Microsoft is backing OpenAI, Amazon is backing Anthropic and Google has Gemini and they all come as pay per token service. This is a favorable set up for cloud providers. Meta doesn't have infrastructure monetizing business model. So, for Meta open sourcing their foundation model is a preemptive strike against the others to weaken their hand.