Meta has a brand-new Llama to show off. On Thursday, the social media giant announced Llama 3, the next version of its open-source model for the Meta AI assistant, which it hopes will make its chatbot the leading artificial intelligence technology. Putting aside the question of whether this latest large language model (LLM) changes Meta’s positioning within the broader AI arms race, there’s a bigger issue at play here: The advances of the open-source Llama 3 raise some major questions about the safety of democratizing AI this early in the technology’s developmental process. Experts say there are both pros and cons. Innovation could be accelerated, but it could also result in creations like deepfakes and more troubling misuses. It’s a thorny, nebulous area. An open-source LLM encourages transparency and could increase public trust in the technology, experts tell Fast Company. When AI companies utilize a closed architecture, there are questions of sourcing and bias. (OpenAI discovered this when it introduced its Sora AI video creation tool and CTO Mira Murati clumsily dodged questions about how it was trained.) Open sourcing also lets researchers and the community explore new opportunities. In a best-case scenario, it can increase productivity and develop solutions that boost the value of its responses for users. (Meta’s not the only company open sourcing its model. Google’s Gemma is also part of the open-source ecosystem.) “With open-source LLM, organizations will have more capabilities to develop and deploy AI-powered solutions,” says Rajiv Garg, a professor at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. “Llama 3 is a solid model that will reduce the entry barrier significantly for most organizations—especially the ones that want to fine-tune these models with their internal data.”
Full story : The ethical pros and cons of Meta’s new Llama 3 open-source AI model.
