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forestrywat | on: Mark Zuckerberg attacks 'closed' AI rivals as Meta returns to open models
Is this "I'm losing so I think we should change the rules"? Because it seems like that.
drob518 | parent | next
It’s a long term pattern. When you’re winning (Anthropic), you keep the tech closed and try to monetize it as much as possible. When you’re losing (Meta), you open it up or drag it into a standards committee to either devalue it or slow the leader down while you prepare a “standard” version of it. You also highlight how altruistic and morally good you are for having done so. There is nothing new under the sun. It’s all a game.
sanderjd | root | parent | next
Yes, but it's good for everyone that the strategy of attempting to commoditize the cash cow of a competitor exists.
overfeed | root | parent | next
> ...drag it into a standards committee to either devalue it or slow the leader down

Anthropic et al recently proposed a supranational AI governing body designed to slow everyone down (euphemistically calling it "AI pacing"). Are the Pacer signatories losing?

skohan | root | parent | next
That could be a move towards regulatory capture. Enact standards that they (and OpenAI) largely control, block access to Chinese models in the US, and effectively prevent challengers from catching up.

At the same time they slow down the arms race, so they can back off on training Capex without losing their lead.

solenoid0937 | root | parent
Literally nothing in their proposal is about blocking access to Chinese models, HN has devolved so much with these conspiratorial hot takes.
thraway3837 | root | parent
The governing body is only the western allies. USA + AUS + EU. Or anyone else that may sign a deeply disturbing and restrictive treaty. It's to make sure that the global majority does not make a better model or have access to the same hardware. As is currently the case with embargoes on EUV machines going to China, etc.

Models are not a moat, and I think OpenAI/Anthropic know this. They know that their IPO is being weakened by the open models. Neither is hardware. We are not far from other countries catching up with silicon that matches or exceeds western capabilities, and it will be cheaper.

basch | root | parent | next
No. Opening it is to commoditize and reduce the price to use. This increases participation and creates new consumers and demand. Demand creates justification for further creation.

All the participants know it’s both a race to the bottom and a competition for premium tier at the same time. It’s two different games, meta in only really playing one of them successfully.

Melatonic | root | parent
I suspect its also because Facebook has the infrastructure to do this. One thing they have done from the start is quite good infrastructure without outsourcing to any of the big cloud providers. I cant imagine demand / bandwith / compute use is increasing much for Facebook itself so they probably have the money and time to dedicate to scaling up for AI research.
germandiago | root | parent | next
Competition is good.
thraway3837 | root | parent
Great take, just came here to say this and you said it better than I could have.

I don't trust Zuck, and I think there's a larger strategy that he has been advised on this and he's simply copy pasting a PR piece his people made.

andy99 | parent | next
It’s “I’m losing so I’ll try something else”. It’s what any rational actor in a market economy would do, and it should be encouraged. “I’m winning so I’ll pull up the ladder behind me” is what we want to avoid.
sodapopcan | parent | next
Similar to Altman saying "we should slow down."
amarcheschi | root | parent | next
or musk a few years ago, pause ai training for 6 months (so we can catch up)
scotty79 | root | parent
OpenAI is not losing though. Fable is barely available and barely cooperates. Sonnet 5 is obnoxious model that's terrible to work with. GPT-5.6-sol competently gets stuff done. Just be careful not to ask it for impossible stuff because you might not like the lengths it's gonna go to get them done regardless.
VCFundedGenYer | root | parent | next
OpenAI is losing historic amounts of money. They are constantly at risk of bankruptcy or going far under.

No AI company is winning.

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some_random | parent | next
It's the same game that's been played since the invention of commerce.
wombat-man | parent | next
I think the plan is to move on to selling compute. So yeah, open your models so people can pay to run them on Meta hardware.
HDThoreaun | parent | next
It makes strategic sense for Meta to want ai in general to be open. Their own product strategy focuses on utilizing the ai to make their customers consume more ads, not selling the raw intelligence. When you look at it from that frame it’s clear that metas goal is to make it so that have free access to the best ai, not that the market size of selling intelligence grows.
whateveracct | parent | next
meta playing spoiler, yeah. fun stuff!
lenerdenator | parent | next
Yeah? Everyone everywhere does that all the time. That's the first rule of business: try to game the system.

And this time, it's actually somewhat understandable, as opposed to the other times Meta has done horrible things on Zuck's watch, like contributed to ethnic hatred in Myanmar, leaked data to political firms so that they can run psyops, or enabled the production of CSAM material on Meta's platforms.

RunSet | parent | next
"They 'trust me'. Dumb fucks."

\- Mark Zuckerberg[0]

[0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/09/20/the-face-of-fa...

basch | root | parent
It was an insightful comment at the time he made it.

His point wasn’t that he couldn’t be trusted, it was that he could be anyone and people had zero awareness or concern for their privacy. It was eye opening to him how little people outside tech circles cared about security, and he was both flippant and accurate.

loading story #49246191
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Yizahi | parent
That, and also redefining what a word "open" means, helps him avoid direct financial and criminal responsibility for stealing other people's data. Not that there was any real chance of that ever, but he is reducing that remaining 0.000000001% chance even lower.