Mark Zuckerberg: Open Source AI Is the Path Forward — Full Manifesto · 2024-07-23 · primary
Themes: Spectrum of Motivations
Capable models should be required to pass pre-release testing, binding open weights and closed APIs alike.
Our safety process includes rigorous testing and red-teaming to assess whether our models are capable of meaningful harm, with the goal of mitigating risks before release. Since the models are open, anyone is capable of testing for themselves as well. We must keep in mind that these models are trained by information that's already on the internet, so the starting point when considering harm should be whether a model can facilitate more harm than information that can quickly be retrieved from Google or other search results.
Mark Zuckerberg: Open Source AI Is the Path Forward — Full Manifesto · 2024-07-23
Open models keep AI continually available, rather than dependent on any one provider's decisions.
The next question is how the US and democratic nations should handle the threat of states with massive resources like China. The United States' advantage is decentralized and open innovation. Some people argue that we must close our models to prevent China from gaining access to them, but my view is that this will not work and will only disadvantage the US and its allies. Our adversaries are great at espionage, stealing models that fit on a thumb drive is relatively easy, and most tech companies are far from operating in a way that would make this more difficult.
Mark Zuckerberg: Open Source AI Is the Path Forward — Full Manifesto · 2024-07-23
I believe that open source is necessary for a positive AI future. AI has more potential than any other modern technology to increase human productivity, creativity, and quality of life — and to accelerate economic growth while unlocking progress in medical and scientific research. Open source will ensure that more people around the world have access to the benefits and opportunities of AI, that power isn't concentrated in the hands of a small number of companies, and that the technology can be deployed more evenly and safely across society.
Mark Zuckerberg: Open Source AI Is the Path Forward — Full Manifesto · 2024-07-23
People often ask if I'm worried about giving up a technical advantage by open sourcing Llama, but I think this misses the big picture for a few reasons:
Mark Zuckerberg: Open Source AI Is the Path Forward — Full Manifesto · 2024-07-23
Open models strengthen the country that hosts them, so restricting their release weakens the very position it means to protect.
Open weights prevent AI from being controlled by a few actors, because anyone can run them.
At some point in the future, individual bad actors may be able to use the intelligence of AI models to fabricate entirely new harms from the information available on the internet. At this point, the balance of power will be critical to AI safety. I think it will be better to live in a world where AI is widely deployed so that larger actors can check the power of smaller bad actors. This is how we've managed security on our social networks — our more robust AI systems identify and stop threats from less sophisticated actors who often use smaller scale AI systems.
Mark Zuckerberg: Open Source AI Is the Path Forward — Full Manifesto · 2024-07-23
## Why Open Source AI Is Good for the World
Mark Zuckerberg: Open Source AI Is the Path Forward — Full Manifesto · 2024-07-23
Releasing model weights raises the risk of catastrophic misuse, because guardrails cannot be applied and usage cannot be monitored once the weights are out.
There is an ongoing debate about the safety of open source AI models, and my view is that open source AI will be safer than the alternatives. I think governments will conclude it's in their interest to support open source because it will make the world more prosperous and safer.
Mark Zuckerberg: Open Source AI Is the Path Forward — Full Manifesto · 2024-07-23
A coordinated slowdown is worth pursuing even at the cost of advantage, because uncoordinated speed is the greater risk.
Building national AI capacity on sovereign infrastructure is sound policy for smaller countries, not merely a way to sell deployments.
Meta's business model is about building the best experiences and services for people. To do this, we must ensure that we always have access to the best technology, and that we're not locking into a competitor's closed ecosystem where they can restrict what we build.
Mark Zuckerberg: Open Source AI Is the Path Forward — Full Manifesto · 2024-07-23
Many organizations handle sensitive data that they need to secure and can't send to closed models over cloud APIs. Other organizations simply don't trust the closed model providers with their data. Open source addresses these issues by enabling you to run the models wherever you want. It is well-accepted that open source software tends to be more secure because it is developed more transparently.
Mark Zuckerberg: Open Source AI Is the Path Forward — Full Manifesto · 2024-07-23
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