This week, Meta Platforms released Llama 2, the next generation of its open-source large language model that is free for research and commercial use. Llama 2’s pretrained and fine-tuned language models are available in sizes ranging from 7 to 70 billion parameters. Meta also named Microsoft Azure its “preferred partner for Llama 2,” offering it through the Azure AI model catalog for use with cloud-native tools that leverage content filtering and safety features. Meta says Llama 2 is “also optimized to run locally on Windows,” providing developers a seamless workflow across enterprise and consumer platforms. Continue reading Meta Unveils Llama 2 LLM with Microsoft as Preferred Partner

AI-startup Inflection has unveiled a new foundation LLM (large language model) to power its Pi chatbot. Inflection-1 approximates OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 in terms of size and functionality, which puts it on a par with ChatGPT insofar as model training. Inflection claims its LLM exceeds some benchmarks when tested against that competing system, as well as Meta Platforms’ LLaMA, DeepMind’s Chinchilla and Google’s PaLM-540B. Pi is short for Personal Intelligence, and Inflection compiled its LLM with a goal of creating an emotive AI whose conversation provides a reasonable facsimile of empathy and human-like sensibilities. Continue reading Inflection Shares Test Results for Its First AI Language Model

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg received a letter this week from Senators Richard Blumenthal and Josh Hawley of the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology & the Law that took the executive to task for an online leak of the company’s LLaMA artificial intelligence system. The 65-billion parameter language model, which is still under development, was open-sourced in February. Available on request through Meta’s GitHub portal, it wound up on 4chan and BitTorrent “making it available to anyone, anywhere in the world, without monitoring or oversight,” the senators wrote. Continue reading Senators Question Meta Platforms About Recent LLaMA Leak

Meta Platforms has shared additional details on its next generation of AI infrastructure. The company has designed two custom silicon chips, including one for training and running AI models and eventually powering metaverse functions like virtual reality and augmented reality. Another chip is tailored to optimize video processing. Meta publicly discussed its internal chip development last week ahead of a Thursday virtual event on AI infrastructure. The company also showcased an AI-optimized data center design and talked about phase two of deployment of its 16,000 GPU supercomputer for AI research. Continue reading Meta In-House Chip Designs Include Processing for AI, Video

Respected members of the advanced tech community are going on record opposing the faction calling for a “pause” in large-model artificial intelligence development. Meta Platforms chief AI scientist Yann LeCun and DeepLearning.AI founder and CEO Andrew Ng, formerly at Alphabet where he helped launch Google Brain, were joined this past week by Bill Gates and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt in opposing the proposed six-month halt to development of AI models more advanced than OpenAI’s GPT-4, which is said to train on a trillion parameters — more than 500 times that of GPT-3. Continue reading Mixed Reactions to ‘Pause’ on AI Models Larger than GPT-4

Today’s leading AI chatbots need tremendous computing resources to train, then function, but that isn’t stopping startups from trying to get into the game, some with open-source alternatives. Clearly disadvantaged compared to market leaders like OpenAI, Meta, DeepMind and Anthropic — deep-pocketed, all — a band of independent researchers has coalesced under the name Together. Their aim: to become the first open-source challenger to the likes of ChatGPT. The industry seems undecided as to whether open-source AI is a good thing. Many are worried at the thought of a universally available AI toolkit, and what troublemakers might do with it. Continue reading Researchers Developing Open-Source Challenger to ChatGPT

Google is readying an API and other enterprise tools for its Pathways Language Model (PaLM) — a large language model similar to GPT — to encourage developers to create chatbots and other apps using the platform. PaLM is one of Google’s most advanced systems, with the capability to generate text, images, code, video and audio from natural language prompts. Much like OpenAI’s GTP series and the LLaMA family from Meta Platforms, it is suitable for a wide variety of general tasks. To facilitate PaLM’s use for specific tasks, Google is launching the MakerSuite along with the PaLM API. Continue reading Google’s PaLM API, MakerSuite Coming to Select Developers

Meta Platforms has unveiled a new generative artificial intelligence language system called LLaMA, which doesn’t chat, but is designed as a research tool the company hopes will help “democratizing access in this important, fast-changing field.” The LLaMA (Large Language Model Meta AI) ranges in size from 7B to 65B parameters. Touted as a “smaller, more performant model,” LLaMA enables those members of the research community that do not “have access to large amounts of infrastructure to study these models,” Meta explains. Training smaller foundation models requires less computing power and resources for testing and validation. Continue reading Meta Says Its LLaMA AI for Researchers Does More with Less