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Why does Meta invest millions in Llama 3 and then makes it available for free? Here is Zuckerberg's explanation to investors in the Q3 2023 earnings call:
"The second part of our playbook is open source software infrastructure. Our long-standing strategy has been to build and open source general infrastructure while keeping our specific product implementations proprietary.
[...] First, open source software is typically safer and more secure, as well as more compute efficient to operate due to all the ongoing feedback, scrutiny, and development from the community. This is a big deal because safety is one of the most important issues in AI. Efficiency improvements and lowering the compute costs also benefit everyone including us.
Second, open source software often becomes an industry standard, and when companies standardize on building with our stack, that then becomes easier to integrate new innovations into our products. That’s subtle, but the ability to learn and improve quickly is a huge advantage and being an industry standard enables that.
Third, open source is hugely popular with developers and researchers. We know that people want to work on open systems that will be widely adopted, so this helps us recruit the best people at Meta, which is a very big deal for leading in any new technology area.
And again, we typically have unique data and build unique product integrations anyway, so providing infrastructure like Llama as open source doesn't reduce our main advantages. This is why our long-standing strategy has been to open source general infrastructure and why I expect it to continue to be the right approach for us going forward."
Fully earnings call transcript: https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2023/q4/META-Q4-2023-Earnings-Call-Transcript.pdf
"The second part of our playbook is open source software infrastructure. Our long-standing strategy has been to build and open source general infrastructure while keeping our specific product implementations proprietary.
[...] First, open source software is typically safer and more secure, as well as more compute efficient to operate due to all the ongoing feedback, scrutiny, and development from the community. This is a big deal because safety is one of the most important issues in AI. Efficiency improvements and lowering the compute costs also benefit everyone including us.
Second, open source software often becomes an industry standard, and when companies standardize on building with our stack, that then becomes easier to integrate new innovations into our products. That’s subtle, but the ability to learn and improve quickly is a huge advantage and being an industry standard enables that.
Third, open source is hugely popular with developers and researchers. We know that people want to work on open systems that will be widely adopted, so this helps us recruit the best people at Meta, which is a very big deal for leading in any new technology area.
And again, we typically have unique data and build unique product integrations anyway, so providing infrastructure like Llama as open source doesn't reduce our main advantages. This is why our long-standing strategy has been to open source general infrastructure and why I expect it to continue to be the right approach for us going forward."
Fully earnings call transcript: https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2023/q4/META-Q4-2023-Earnings-Call-Transcript.pdf