[pchristensen]

Meta doesn't have an AI "product" competing with OpenAI, Google's Bard, etc. But they use AI extensively internally. This is roughly a byproduct of their internal AI work that they're already doing, and fostering open source AI development puts incredible pressure on the AI products and their owners.

If Meta can help prevent there from being an AI monopoly company, but rather an ecosystem of comparable products, then they avoid having another threatening tech giant competitor, as well as preventing their own AI work and products from being devalued.

Think of it like Google releasing a web browser.

[IshKebab]

Google releasing a (very popular) web browser gives them direct control of web standards. What does this give Facebook?

[eganist]

OP already mentioned that it adds additional hurdles for possible future tech giants to have to cross on their quest.

It's akin to a Great Filter, if such an analogy helps. If Meta's open models make a company's closed models uneconomical for others to consume, then the business case for those models is compromised and the odds of them growing to a size where they can compete with Meta in other ways is mitigated a bit.

[patapong]

I think we should not underestimate the strategic talent acquisition value as well. Many top-tier AI engineers may appreciate the openness and choose to join meta, which could be very valuable in the long run.

[jwkane]

Excellent point -- goodwill in a hyper-high demand dev community is invaluable.

[fngjdflmdflg]

Web standards are probably the last thing Google cares about with Chrome. Much more important is being the default search engine and making sure data collection isn't interrupted by a potential privacy minded browser.