If Nvidia were interested in "open" AI, they would spend time to collaborate with AMD, etc. to build an (updated) open alternative to CUDA. That's probably the most closed part of the whole stack right now.
Nvidia is interested in commoditizing their complements. It's a business strategy to decrease the power of OpenAI (for instance).
Nvidia dreams of a world where there are lots of "open" alternatives to OpenAI, like there are lots of open game engines and lots open software in general. All buying closed Nvidia chips.
They could also publish all of their source code, die designs, put their patents in the public domain and go live on a beach somewhere and fish for a living.
CUDA is what they sell, it makes more sense for them to charge for hardware and give the hardware-locked software away for free.
Came here to say this. It is the basis for my entire business. It isn't just CUDA though, it is the hardware layer too. That is why we are exclusive to AMD AI hardware.
We have dozens of companies building foundational models and they all target a single vendor to supply all the hardware? Make it make sense! Yes, I know models run on AMD too, but the fact is, Nvidia, who's clearly doing a great job, is a literal monopoly. We need viable alternatives.
This deal was done with CirraScale, who are great people. It is important to point out that they are also one of the 13 official AMD Cloud Partners. I'm on the list too.
That's because nvidia is in the business of selling chips and compute time. All they care bout is that as much people on Earth become dependend on AI running on nvidia hw as possible.
Maybe that'll help them hire someone who can at least respond to S2 API key requests...
Being open is great, but if over the course of 6 months 3 different entities (including 2 well known universities) apply and send more than a dozen follow ups to 3 different "Reach out to us!" emails with exactly 0 response, the "open" starts sounding like it's coming from Facebook.
Not sure what's with the HN tone on this announcement. AI2 are really some of the best people around for creating truly open artifacts for the whole ecosystem. Their work on OLMo and Molmo is some of the most transparent and educational material you can find on model building. This is just great news for everyone.
I can’t wait until I can run this shit locally without spending $10,000 on clusters of GPU’s. The models will be trained using some distributed P2P-like technology that “The Man” can’t stop.
Imagine running a model trained by the degenerates on 4chan. Models that encourage you to cheat on your homework, happily crank out photos of world leaders banging farm animals, and gleefully generate the worst gore imaginable. And best of all, any junior high schooler on the planet can do it.
That’s how you know this technology has arrived. None of this sanitized, lawyer approved, safety weenie certified, three letter agency authorized nonsense we have now. Until it’s all local, it’s just an extension of the existing regime.
After reading through the article I couldn't understand what an open AI ecosystem is. Are they talking about hardware or software? If it's software we have opensource models, are they going to create open source vertical integrations?
Some people will be too young to know the commoditize[1] your complements wisdom of yesteryear. It's hard for me to tell if consumers end up net ahead after things settle.
I'm surprised we haven't heard about OpenAI pushing a facebook style OpenCompute project or ARM (acorn, apple, VLSI) or similar for the stack below them.
I guess that makes sense: make Nvidia hardware run stuff so well you buy more of it. That’s all CUDA is it’s a way to get people to buy more CUDA capable hardware aka Nvidia cards.
Are we sure this isn’t Nvidia’s play to make what OpenAI is for Microsoft? Start with a bunch of non-profit, research-for-the-good-of-humanity promises before closing ranks and soliciting venture capital for its for-profit subsidiary?
I don’t want to be cynical, it’s just that the world has left very few options otherwise.
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[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 45.5 ms ] threadNSF and NVIDIA award Ai2 $152M to support building a fully open AI ecosystem
To better indicate that this is not related to OpenAI and that the group intends to release everything needed to train their models.
Nvidia dreams of a world where there are lots of "open" alternatives to OpenAI, like there are lots of open game engines and lots open software in general. All buying closed Nvidia chips.
CUDA is what they sell, it makes more sense for them to charge for hardware and give the hardware-locked software away for free.
We have dozens of companies building foundational models and they all target a single vendor to supply all the hardware? Make it make sense! Yes, I know models run on AMD too, but the fact is, Nvidia, who's clearly doing a great job, is a literal monopoly. We need viable alternatives.
This deal was done with CirraScale, who are great people. It is important to point out that they are also one of the 13 official AMD Cloud Partners. I'm on the list too.
Being open is great, but if over the course of 6 months 3 different entities (including 2 well known universities) apply and send more than a dozen follow ups to 3 different "Reach out to us!" emails with exactly 0 response, the "open" starts sounding like it's coming from Facebook.
Imagine running a model trained by the degenerates on 4chan. Models that encourage you to cheat on your homework, happily crank out photos of world leaders banging farm animals, and gleefully generate the worst gore imaginable. And best of all, any junior high schooler on the planet can do it.
That’s how you know this technology has arrived. None of this sanitized, lawyer approved, safety weenie certified, three letter agency authorized nonsense we have now. Until it’s all local, it’s just an extension of the existing regime.
I'm surprised we haven't heard about OpenAI pushing a facebook style OpenCompute project or ARM (acorn, apple, VLSI) or similar for the stack below them.
[1]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/
I don’t want to be cynical, it’s just that the world has left very few options otherwise.