But also: Facebook/Meta got burned when they missed the train on owning a mobile platform, instead having to live in their competitors' houses and being vulnerable to de-platforming on mobile. So they've invested massively in trying to make VR the next big thing to get out from that precarious position, or maybe even to get to own the next big platform after mobile (so far with little to actually show for it at a strategic level).
Anyways, what we're now seeing is this mindset reflected in a new way with LLMs - Meta would rather that the next big thing belongs to everybody, than to a competitor.
I'm really glad they've taken that approach, but I wouldn't delude myself that it's all hacker-mentality altruism, and not a fair bit of strategic cynicism at work here too.
If Zuck thought he could "own" LLMs and make them a walled garden, I'm sure he would, but the ship already sailed on developing a moat like that for anybody that's not OpenAI - now it's in Zuck's interest to get his competitor's moat bridged as fast as possible.
> now it's in Zuck's interest to get his competitor's moat bridged as fast as possible.
It's this, and by making it open and available on every cloud out there would make this accessible to other start ups who might play in Meta's competitor's spaces.
In fact Google doesn't care much if Apple controls the entire mobile phone market, Android is just guaranteed way of acquiring new users. Now they are paying yearly around $19 billion Apple to be default search engine, I expect without Android this price would be times more.
Anyways, what we're now seeing is this mindset reflected in a new way with LLMs - Meta would rather that the next big thing belongs to everybody, than to a competitor.
I'm really glad they've taken that approach, but I wouldn't delude myself that it's all hacker-mentality altruism, and not a fair bit of strategic cynicism at work here too.
If Zuck thought he could "own" LLMs and make them a walled garden, I'm sure he would, but the ship already sailed on developing a moat like that for anybody that's not OpenAI - now it's in Zuck's interest to get his competitor's moat bridged as fast as possible.