Nick Clegg defends launch of open-source AI mannequin by Meta | Synthetic intelligence (AI)

Nick Clegg has defended the release of an open-source artificial intelligence mannequin by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, as he claimed that “hype” about AI’s risks was operating forward of the expertise’s improvement.

The president of world affairs at Meta and former UK deputy prime minister spoke on Wednesday after the corporate mentioned it was opening entry to its new massive language mannequin (LLM), Llama 2, which can be free for analysis and industrial use. LLMs are skilled on huge quantities of knowledge and underpin generative AI merchandise akin to the ChatGPT chatbot.

Some consultants have warned that making AI fashions open supply – or freely accessible to make use of and adapt for distinctive functions – may result in the expertise getting used for malicious functions.

Talking on BBC Radio 4’s As we speak programme, Clegg mentioned: “My view is that the hype has considerably run forward of the expertise. I believe a number of the existential warnings relate to fashions that don’t presently exist, so-called super-intelligent, super-powerful AI fashions – the imaginative and prescient the place AI develops an autonomy and company by itself, the place it could actually suppose for itself and reproduce itself.

“The fashions that we’re open-sourcing are far, far, far wanting that. In reality, in some ways they’re fairly silly.”

Clegg mentioned Meta had 350 folks “stress-testing” its fashions over a number of months to examine for any potential issues, and Llama 2 was safer than some other open-source massive language fashions accessible.

He mentioned “it’s not as if we’re at a T-junction” the place firms can “select to open supply or not”, including: “Fashions are being open-sourced on a regular basis already.”

Whereas Clegg mentioned he strongly believed AI needs to be regulated, he added that that “doesn’t imply that each single AI mannequin needs to be open-sourced”.

In Could, Google was warned by certainly one of its engineers that it could be beaten in the AI race by generally accessible open-source expertise. “The uncomfortable reality is, we aren’t positioned to win this arms race and neither is [ChatGPT developer] OpenAI. Whereas we’ve been squabbling, a 3rd faction has been quietly consuming our lunch,” the engineer wrote, referring to open-source AI.