Evaluating Meta’s New Llama 3 Models
Meta’s release of Llama 3 has been met with positive acclaim for its competitive capabilities. This blog discusses the new series of models and Meta’s overall approach to AI.
Meta’s Llama 3
Meta has released the latest in its series of quasi-open-source language models, Llama 3. The model is designed primarily for chat use cases and comes in a smaller 8B parameter and larger 70B parameter version.
The models possess a context length of 8,000 tokens, giving them competitive abilities when it comes to retaining and understanding user input.
Meta itself has stated that its models are competitive with available closed-source market offerings, and many users are reporting positive initial experiences with Llama 3.
At the same time, AI benchmarking is not an exact science, with many different approaches to evaluating model capabilities, it can be hard to truly construct a hierarchy of AI models. At the same time, Meta’s new model is clearly a success when it comes to user experiences, and its commitment to a largely open-source approach and rapid integration across its products are differentiators.
The State of Open Source AI
Meta’s latest release makes an impressive case for the future of open-source AI. Open-source models are increasingly demonstrating their ability to stand toe-to-toe with the proprietary offerings of the major AI providers. At the same time, it remains unclear whether this gap will close.
In the past, OpenAI has managed to ‘leapfrog’ the state of the art with its releases, which, if it continues to be the case, could mean that open-source is playing a game of perpetual catch-up.
Further, there are questions about whether it is even appropriate to call Meta’s Llama models open-source software.
While the models are released for free public use, they also come with licensing restrictions that do not stand up to the strictest definitions of open-source software. Some call into question the ethics of an open-source movement led by major corporations, rather than decentralized developers or non-profit organizations. Still, the Llama 3 series puts an impressive amount of power in the hands of users.
Bottom Line
Meta remains committed to a largely open-source approach that distinguishes it from other leading AI providers. It remains to be seen whether models like Llama 3 will become the preferred choice for new AI startups, but Meta has taken a strong step forward with its latest release.
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