On the evening of April 11, Robin Lee, chairman and CEO of Baidu, made an internal speech.
The reporter noticed that in this internal speech, Robin Lee said that the real advantage of entrepreneurs should be their knowledge and data in a certain field. The same is true for big models, which can provide unique value only if they have domain knowledge. Therefore, there is no need to worry about the application of AI in basic models. In addition, the open source of big models is of little significance, and the closed source can go through the business model.
Don't worry, the basic big model will take over all AI applications
In Robin Lee's opinion, the so-called "two wheel drive" described by some outside start-ups that do models is not a good model. Doing both models and applications is bound to distract energy. The energy and resources of start-ups are limited. It is self-evident which success rate is higher to do two things at the same time or only one thing.
He believes that for AI entrepreneurs, the core competitiveness should not be the model itself, which is too resource intensive and requires a very long period of persistence to run out.
"The real advantage of entrepreneurs should be their knowledge and data in a certain field. If a big model has domain knowledge, it can rely on domain knowledge to provide unique value." Robin Lee, for example, said that in the mobile era, WeChat did not eat Pinduoduo, nor did Didi become part of Tencent. They all provided their own unique value and had their own very different competitiveness. Their rise depended on a closed platform in the mobile ecosystem - WeChat, but they were not afraid of WeChat to grab its job, so there was no need to worry about the application of basic model AI.
Robin Lee also said that the outside world worried that if Wenxin or closed source model was used, if it was done well, it would copy you and eat your food. In fact, there was no reason for such concern.
Only with a closed source model can there be a true business model
In this internal speech, Robin Lee also talked for the first time about why the Wenxin big model is not open source, and expressed his own views on the industry focus topics such as the route selection and application of open source and closed source of the big model.
He revealed that when the Wenxin model was first released a year ago, there was a very heated discussion within Baidu, and in the end, everyone decided not to open source it.
"Why not open source? At that time, the judgment was that there must be open source models in the market, and more than one would open source. In this case, there is not much open source for more Baidu, and there are many open sources for less Baidu." Robin Lee said.
Robin Lee gave an example. Today, we see mainstream open source models, such as Llama and Mistral, which are quite influential. The domestic Zhiyuan, Baichuan and Ali are also open source. There is no shortage of our open source models in this market. "If we want to open source, we have to maintain an open source version, which is not cost-effective".
In addition, in Robin Lee's opinion, model open source is not a situation where everyone gathers firewood, which is very different from the traditional software open source such as Linux, Android, etc. Since it is the open source brought by the model, we don't know why the parameters have become like that. In this case, it is difficult to achieve a situation where everyone gathers firewood, which is very high.
In addition, Robin Lee also believes that the closed source of the big model has many advantages such as cost and efficiency.
Robin Lee said that everyone thinks that open source is free and has advantages in cost. In fact, we think that closed source has advantages in cost. As long as it has the same ability, the reasoning cost of closed source models must be lower and the response speed must be faster. Conversely, the ability of closed source models is stronger under the same parameters.
"Today, whether in China or the United States, the strongest basic models are closed source, and all kinds of small models and the best small models are distilled from the big model. The model made by reducing the dimension of the big model is better, which will also lead to the advantages of closed source in cost and efficiency." Robin Lee said.
Robin Lee believes that the closed source model will continue to lead in capacity, rather than temporarily leading. The open source of the big model is of little significance. The closed source can go through the business model. The closed source can make money, and can make money to gather computing power and talents.