[mlepath]

> This reinforce the idea that there is no real strategic advantage in owning a model

For these models probably no. But for proprietary things that are mission critical and purpose-built (think Adobe Creative Suite) the calculus is very different.

MS, Google, Amazon all win from infra for open source models. I have no idea what game Meta is playing

[chefandy]

> I have no idea what game Meta is playing

Based on their business moves in recent history, I’d guess most of them are playing Farmville.

[emidoots]

Meta's entire business model is to own users and their content.

Whether it be Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Messenger, WhatsApp, etc. their focus is to acquire users, keep them in their platforms, and own their content - because /human attention is fundamentally valuable/.

Meta owns 40% of the most popular social media platforms today, but their attention economies face great threats: YouTube, TikTok, Telegram, WeChat, and many more threaten to unseat them every year.

Most importantly, the quality of content on these platforms greatly influences their popularity. If Meta can accelerate AI development in all forms, then it means the content quality across all apps/platforms can be equalized - video on YouTube or TikTok will be no more high quality than on Facebook or Instagram. Messages on Threads will be no more engaging than that on Twitter. Their recent experiments with AI generated profiles[0] signals this is the case.

Once content quality - and luring creators to your platform - are neutralized as business challenges that affect end users lurking on the platform and how effectively they can be retained, then it becomes easier for Meta to retain any user that enters their platforms and gain an effective attention monopoly without needing to continue to buy apps that could otherwise succeed theirs.

And so, it is in their benefit to give away their models 'for free', 'speed up' the industry's development efforts in general, de-risk other companies surpassing their efforts, etc.

[0] https://thebaynet.com/meta-faces-backlash-over-ai-generated-...

[miki123211]

Or, to put it another way:

Meta makes money from ads. To make more money, they either need to capture more of their users' time and show more ads, or show better ads that users click more often.Meta is betting on AI models making it easier to do both.

Better generative AI means you can make more ads faster, which means there are more ad variants to a/b test across, which means it's easier to find an ad that users will click.

To make users stay on their platforms, Meta figures out what content will keep them there, and then shows them that content. Before gen AI, they were only able to show existing content from real users, but sometimes the "ideal" thing for you hasn't been created yet. They bet on the fact that they'll be able to use AI to create hyper-personalized content for their users that engages them better than human-made content.

[chefandy]

Word. I was mostly just making a joke about FarmVille— the classic engagement-vampire facebook game.

[angoragoats]

Can you explain how development of better generative AI (which I assume is what you mean when you say AI) will mean that “content quality across all apps/platforms can be equalized”? Unless you mean the content quality will go to shit equally everywhere (as it did in their AI profile experiment) I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.

[timrogers]

Meta’s definition of quality is not the same as your definition of quality. For them, quality is (within reason) what drives “engagement” (aka time spent in their apps).

It might be that many people’s aesthetic sensibility is that AI-generated content is slop, but I’d still bet that tailored-perfectly-to-you content (and ads) will be highly engaging

[potatoman22]

> I have no idea what game Meta is playing

I think they're commoditizing their complement [1]. Engaging content helps Meta, and LLMs make it easier to create that content. Their business model has never been selling API access and releasing the model enables the community to improve it for them.

[1] https://gwern.net/complement

[ls612]

Meta seems to be playing the “commoditize your complements” game. Which is good for the rest of us who get close to SotA open weights models.