mesebrec

Joined 6 years ago

Karma
978
Submissions
180
Member since
Apr 21
Merlijn Sebrechts

Teaching and researching computer science at Ghent University and imec in Belgium

https://merlijn.sebrechts.be

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Recent submissions

Comment · 11 months ago
Llama's license explicitly disallows its usage in the EU.

If that doesn't even meet the threshold for "terrible", then what does?

Comment · 2 years ago
Comment · 2 years ago
Comment · 2 years ago
This is like saying any python program is open source because the python runtime is open source.

Inference code is the runtime; the code that runs the model. Not the model itself.

Comment · 2 years ago
Regardless of the training data, the license even heavily restricts how you can use the model.

Please read through their "acceptable use" policy before you decide whether this is really in line with open source.

Comment · 2 years ago
Open source requires, at the very least, that you can use it for any purpose. This is not the case with Llama.

The Llama license has a lot of restrictions, based on user base size, type of use, etc.

For example you're not allowed to use Llama to train or improve other models.

But it goes much further than that. The government of India can't use Llama because they're too large. Sex workers are not allowed to use Llama due to the acceptable use policy of the license. Then there is also the vague language probibiting discrimination, racism etc.. good luck getting something like that approved by your legal team.

Comment · 2 years ago
You also can't use it for training or improving other models.

You also can't use it if you're the government of India.

Neither can sex workers use it. (Do you know if your customers are sex workers?)

There are also very vague restrictions for things like discrimination, racism etc.

Comment · 2 years ago
Indeed, fine-tuning is still possible, but you can only go so far with fine-tuning before you need to completely retrain the model.

This is why Silo AI, for example, had to start from scratch to get better support for small European languages.

Comment · 2 years ago
Without Meta, you would still have Mistral, Silo AI, and the many other companies and labs producing much more open models with similar performance.
Comment · 2 years ago
Note that Meta's models are not open source in any interpretation of the term.

* You can't use them for any purpose. For example, the license prohibits using these models to train other models. * You can't meaningfully modify them given there is almost no information available about the training data, how they were trained, or how the training data was processed.

As such, the model itself is not available under an open source license and the AI does not comply with the "open source AI" definition by OSI.

It's an utter disgrace for Meta to write such a blogpost patting themselves on the back while lying about how open these models are.

Comment · 2 years ago
Oh, wow, I came here for the same thing. The tone of the post got more and more annoying as it progressed.

Posting quotes from reddit as if they're intellectual discussions was a red flag, but this specific statement was just too much to ignore.

Although I work on Linux almost daily, I'm happy to say it's possible to simply avoid those kinds of people. Fostering a healthy environment where people can discuss and disagree respectfully is incredibly important for volunteer-led projects like Linux distributions.

Comment · 2 years ago
> On the third hand, I can't deny some amount of schadenfreude looking at Apple having to deal with the same "do the work first, we'll judge if it meets our review standard afterwards" treatment as they do to developers.

That's not really how the process was supposed to work. Apple has had a lot of discussions with the EC over the past year about this law and its implementation.

This is common and the goal is to help the company figure out how to implement it.

However, from the EU side, it seemed as if Apple completely misunderstood what the discussions with the EU were for.

Apple was mainly focused on trying to lobby against all restrictions, not realizing the EU already made up their mind. The EU was trying to prepare Apple, but instead Apple dragged their feet, remained in denial, and were then suddenly surprised that yes, indeed, they really can't lobby their way out of compliance.

Comment · 2 years ago
The reasoning is that apple's marketplace is such a central cornerstone to digital life that it becomes a public resource.

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