Meta's AI Frontier: The Open Innovation Research Community

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0:44When it comes to protecting what matters, Pacific Life provides life insurance, retirement income, and employee benefits for people and businesses building a more confident tomorrow. Strategies rooted in strength and backed by experience. Ask a financial professional how Pacific Life can help you today. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York. Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona. Meta has just announced an AI research community, and this is something that a lot of people have been calling for, but this is not without controversy. There has been a number of different writers, specifically someone over at TechCrunch who's recently wrote an article saying that they are not devoting enough resources to this.

1:23So today on the podcast, we're going to be diving into what exactly they are creating here, what their hopes for, what their objectives are, and what resources they're giving. So we're going to break down exactly, you know, if they really are stifling by not giving enough resources. So without further ado, let's jump into the podcast. So with this entire announcement and this whole, it's called the Open Innovation AI Research Community. It's going to be a new venture intended essentially just to spur quote-unquote transparency, innovation, and collaboration. And they're doing that within the AI research field, obviously.

1:55So this newly formed organization will initially place its emphasis on the privacy, safety, and security of LLMs. You know, you got like OpenAI's ChatGPT and others. So they're going to be doing this in addition to providing input on AI model refinement and also setting a future research agenda. Something that I think is really interesting about all of this is that recently in a blog post, Meta actually said that while their own researchers are expected to be active participants, the new community is going to be largely driven by its members. So Meta's AI R &D division is going to be serving as, you know, a quote unquote facilitator capacity, but they're, you know, not saying like, hey, this is this thing we're going to run and we're going to be in charge of.

2:39They kind of want, you know, I think they want input from a large amount of people. So the blog post said, quote, the group will become a community of practice championing large open source foundational models where partners can collaborate and engage with each other, share learnings, and raise questions on how to build responsible and safe foundational models. So they also added that the initiative is going to fast track the education of upcoming researchers. So I think though the organization is, you know, really trying here, there is definitely some people that are skeptical. But that being said, Meta plans to host a range of workshops intended to tackle what they call critical open research operations or questions and to create guidelines for responsible open source model development and release.

3:29So the specifics on all of that, though, are really not, you know, super clear what that what exactly that means. But meta has mentioned the potential online platforms like a website, social channels and academic conference submissions for collaboration research. But they I mean, really, they stopped short of any solid commitments that they're actually, you know, any concrete plan of action that they plan on taking. So members of the open innovation AI research community are anticipated to bear, I mean, largely, they're going to be doing a large amount of the work and funding of their own work, which I think is really key.

4:06So this isn't like, you know, this isn't a research institute that Meta is setting up where they're going to go fund all these people. Everyone's got to do their own research and they got to do their own funding. And so I think Meta really kind of refrained from promising any specific capital or computational support for the organization's endeavors. And I think that that decision alone could be seen as sort of an effort to avoid allegations of undue influence, right? Because on the one hand, they don't want to be like, oh, you know, we're going to make this institute, we're going to get everyone on here, we're going to have everyone on payroll, we'll pay for all your research, blah, blah, blah.

4:39Like people would be like, oh, they're just trying to tip the scales in their favor, you know, use it, use anything that comes out of it for their own good or it kind of like gets rid of the whole open source feeling from it so on on the one hand there's that but on the other hand it's like they're making this whole you know it kind of well essentially i think it just raises questions regarding like the costs associated with ai research like it's very very expensive very very costly and so if they're just making a kind of central place for people to collaborate and chat like they're not really helping them further a lot of that so I think that's a balance that that definitely has to be struck but previously Meta has faced a lot of controversies related to AI you know they had to withdraw an AI demo following some accusations of incorrect scientific content the company's AI ethics team and also anti-AI bias tools have also faced some criticism there's been some controversy some skeptics that view the formation of the open innovation research community as a performative act so they're essentially saying you know you guys are just setting this up so that you look good to try to buy you know the buy-in from the community that you guys are the good guys but you know a lot of people are you know questioning how sincere meta is if they really care about this or if they're just setting that up so you know but I think those kind of critiques are always going to exist people are always going to question motives And so I don't think the criticism in itself is indicative of anything realistic.

6:11No one has concrete evidence either way that Meta has some nefarious plan here. And so I think despite the skepticism, Meta essentially is just inviting what they say is, quote, professors at accredited universities with relevant experience with AI to participate in this initiative. So I think it's worth noting that there is really a wealth of open machine learning research communities that are not linked with big tech companies. and that these academics could also opt to go there instead, right? Like this isn't the only place that they can go if they want to contribute their research. And so I think that is, you know, kind of important to keep in mind, you know, there is other options.

6:54And so if people don't like this, there definitely is other places for them to go. So I think there's also some room for optimism. I think Meta's open innovation AI research community could potentially deliver on its commitment to essentially generate what they say is a set of positive dynamics to foster more robust representative models. And I think that the application deadline to apply for this is September 10th. So Meta has actually expressed openness to applicants from diverse research disciplines with technical capabilities to pursue research and more than one participant from the same university is welcome to apply.

7:29So I think the initiative could turn out to be a turning point in AI research, but, you know, only time will tell. And I think, in addition, you know, Meta's initiative with this offers a platform that really could address several critical issues within the AI field. I think their vision of fostering a member-led community of AI experts, which is dedicated to, you know, sharing knowledge and questing mythologies and, you know, enhancing the quality of large open source foundational models. I think that really could potentially shift the AI landscape if it's successful. And that's, I guess that's the big, that's the big asterisk on that.

8:05But I think that also Meta's kind of pledged to accelerate the training of future researchers, emphasizes that their focus on, you know, really nurturing the next generation of talent is important to them. So I think that is a commitment that shows their, you know, that's a very positive commitment that could mean this is going in a good direction. and in addition I think that that is uh I think that's important also from their own company because if they're really are focusing on doing you know if they're focusing on doing education for a lot of researchers um for them as a company they can you know use education that uses their own models and so as a company I see that that definitely would be beneficial so this is going to be really interesting to follow in the future um meta is making a lot of big plays in AI and so it's a very interesting one to watch i predict that they are going to be making a lot of big consumer tools in the future and that they're going to be one of the big players in this space because at the moment you know we've made a lot of announcements they've released a lot of open source stuff but we're not really seeing any you know full preach full feature products like chat gpt or something else but i predict that will be coming in the very near future so we'll be following them closely to see when that happens We'll see you next time.