Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, is taking a different approach from most tech moguls by giving away one of the world's top AI models, called Llama, for free. Meta released Llama 3. 1 on Monday, which is the largest and most capable version of the language model. While the cost of developing Llama 3. 1 remains undisclosed, Zuckerberg has previously mentioned that his company is investing billions in AI development. By making this significant release, Meta aims to showcase that the closed approach adopted by many AI companies is not the only way to advance AI technology. However, Meta's decision also places itself at the center of the ongoing debate regarding the risks associated with uncontrolled AI releases. While Llama is trained to prevent generating harmful outputs by default, Meta acknowledges that these safeguards can be removed if modified. Meta asserts that Llama 3. 1 is equally intelligent and useful compared to the best commercial offerings from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. According to Meta, their AI model is recognized as the most advanced in certain AI progress benchmarks. Percy Liang, an associate professor at Stanford University who focuses on open source AI, finds the release very exciting. Liang believes that if developers find Llama 3. 1 as capable as other leading AI models like OpenAI's GPT-4o, many may switch to Meta's offering. Liang looks forward to observing potential shifts in usage patterns. In an open letter accompanying the model release, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg likens Llama to the open source Linux operating system.

He references how Linux, despite initial skepticism from big tech companies, gained popularity and is now widely used in cloud computing and serves as the foundation for the Android mobile OS. Zuckerberg anticipates a similar development trajectory for AI. However, Meta's decision to give away its AI model is not completely altruistic. Previous releases of Llama have bolstered Meta's influence among AI researchers, developers, and startups. Liang points out that Llama 3. 1 does come with certain usage restrictions imposed by Meta, making it not truly open source. These limitations include the scale at which the model can be utilized in commercial products. The latest version of Llama, Llama 3. 1, boasts an impressive 405 billion parameters or tweakable elements. Although it requires substantial computing power and cannot run on regular computers, Meta has announced that various cloud providers such as Databricks, Groq, AWS, and Google Cloud will offer hosting options to enable developers to run customized versions of the model. The model is also accessible at Meta. ai.