Facebook mother dead is As a team with Face hugging and European cloud infrastructure company Scaleway to launch a new AI-focused startup program at the large startup campus Station F in Paris.
The program’s primary goal is to promote a more “open and collaborative” approach to AI development across the French tech world.
The timing of the announcement is noteworthy, as it comes amid increasing pressure for regulation and an apparent conflict between the “open” and “closed” worlds of AI.
Several major tech companies, including Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT, are calling for more regulation and warning of the existential threat posed by AI, even as they are simultaneously developing powerful AI technologies themselves. Some of these arguments focus on the risks of open source AI, and how it can be manipulated by bad actors. On the other side of the debate is the idea that these technology companies are merely creating panic to force regulators to support a more “closed” AI development ethos, thus ultimately protecting themselves from competition.
Meta is very much in the latter camp. Last week, the company’s chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, joined more than 70 other signatories in calling for more openness in AI development, warning against too much regulatory haste.
“History shows us that a rapid push toward the wrong kind of regulation can lead to the concentration of power in ways that harm competition and innovation,” the letter noted. “Open models can enrich open debate and improve policy making. If our goals are safety, security and accountability, then openness and transparency are key to getting there.
Against this backdrop, Meta is collaborating with one of the biggest players in open source AI.
While Meta itself has open-sourced its generative AI models, Hugging Face — a venture capital-backed startup worth $1 billion in its own right — has set up its stall as a sort of open-source alternative to OpenAI, full of open alternatives to OpenAI. The likes of ChatGPT and leading community projects like BigScience.
So, in many ways, the connection between Meta and Hugging Face today makes a lot of sense, given their respective stances on the “open” versus “closed” AI debate.
“For me, open source AI is the most important topic of the decade because it is the cornerstone towards the democratization of ethical AI,” Clement Delange, CEO of Hugging Face, said in a statement.
Open the foundation
From today until December 1 (2023), startups can be applied to join the new “AI Startup Programme” at Station F, with five winners moving on to the accelerator program that will run from January to June. The selected startups were selected by a jury from Meta, Hugging Face and the French cloud company Scalethey will have at least one thing in common — they will be working on projects built intrinsically on open foundation models, or at least can demonstrate “a desire to integrate these models into their products and services,” according to the announcement from Meta today.
“With the proliferation of basic models and generative AI models, the goal is to bring the economic and technological benefits of open and evolving models to the French ecosystem,” the announcement noted.
It is somewhat notable that Meta has chosen to avoid major cloud infrastructure companies – and opponents of open source AI – such as Microsoft and Google, instead opting to partner with a smaller, independent European player in the form of Scaleway.
In fact, the winning startups will receive mentoring from Meta researchers and engineers, will have access to various Hugging Face platforms and tools, and will be able to compute resources from Scaleway.
While it would be incorrect to say that Meta has abandoned its lofty ambitions, a lot has changed in the past 12 months. About a year ago, Meta teamed up with L’Oréal and French business school HEC to Launch the startup accelerator At Station F he focused on all things VR/AR/AR related. But with ChatGPT and the AI-generating hype train gaining steam, Meta has had to refocus its efforts on something closer to the near term, which is where this new accelerator enters the fray.