Open Source Lama2 Language Model Surpasses GPT-3.5Capabilities

Table of Contents

• Lama2 Offers Free Commercial and Research Use
• Language Model Benchmarks and Performance
• Safety and Filtering Capabilities
• Up-to-Date Training Data from 2022-2023
• Applications and Use Cases
• Conclusion and Impacts on AI Industry

Lama2 Offers Free Commercial and Research Use

MetaJust surprised us with a brand new open source language model called Lama2. This thing is the best open source model we have, and in many cases they claim this to be better than GPT 3.5, which is the default ChatGPT.

The licensing terms allow for widespread adoption and use of Lama2, even for commercial purposes. As long as your product or service built on Lama2 has less than 700 million monthly active users, you can use it for free with no royalties.

Licensing Terms Allow Widespread Adoption

The licensing agreement grants a non-exclusive, worldwide, non-transferable and royalty-free limited license to use Lama2. The only exception is if your product built on Lama2 exceeds 700 million monthly active users, then you need to request an additional license from Meta. This essentially means that anyone except the largest tech giants like Amazon, Apple, and Google can use Lama2 freely for commercial purposes with no restrictions.

Monthly Active User Limits

The licensing agreement does specify that if your product built on Lama2 exceeds 700 million monthly active users, you need to get an additional license from Meta. So this sets a reasonable threshold that allows widespread adoption and use cases, while still protecting Meta's interests for the very largest scale deployments.

Language Model Benchmarks and Performance

In terms of raw language model performance, Lama2 matches or exceeds GPT 3.5 on many academic benchmarks. For example, on the helpfulness benchmark, Lama2 edged out GPT 3.5, even though that test focused mainly on information retrieval rather than more advanced capabilities.

The 70 billion parameter Lama2 model outperformed other leading open source models on benchmarks like reading comprehension, math, and reasoning. So while proprietary models like GPT-4 still lead, Lama2 sets a new high bar for open source.

Safety and Filtering Capabilities

Evil Prompts Test

On an 'evil prompts' safety test with 2000 examples, the Lama2 model only produced potentially concerning outputs around 4% of the time. That compares very favorably to GPT-3.5's score of 7%, making Lama2 likely the safest high-capability open source model.

Family Friendly Outputs

The Lama2 model has also been specifically fine-tuned to increase alignment with human preferences and produce more family friendly outputs. This tuning helps improve usability and safety for business applications like chatbots.

Up-to-Date Training Data from 2022-2023

Unlike GPT-3.5 which was trained on data only up to 2021, Lama2 incorporates training data up until September 2022. There was also additional human feedback tuning data applied to the model from through July 2023.

This gives Lama2 an extra year of up-to-date knowledge and capabilities compared to previous models. Over time, this recency of training data is a key driver of improved language model performance and usefulness.

Applications and Use Cases

Chatbots and Conversational AI

One major use case for Lama2 will be developing chatbots and conversational AI products. Previously, companies often relied on external APIs like GPT-3 which have usage limits, ongoing costs, and risks of policy changes. With Lama2, you can create self-contained chatbot products personalized to your business needs without any external dependencies or ongoing costs.

Custom Business Solutions

More broadly, Lama2 allows custom AI solutions tailored to specific business needs across a variety of verticals and applications. The open source nature gives companies full control, easy integration, and assurance that solutions will continue working without reliance on external providers.

Conclusion and Impacts on AI Industry

With its advanced capabilities, open source license, and up-to-date knowledge, Lama2 represents a breakthrough model poised to have significant impacts across the AI landscape.

It sets a new standard for commercially usable open source language models, and paves the way for more innovation by putting state-of-the-art conversational AI in the hands of developers and businesses everywhere.

FAQ

Q: Is Lama2 better than GPT-3.5?
A: Yes, benchmark tests show Lama2 narrowly beats GPT-3.5 in domains like reading comprehension while having more recent training data.

Q: Can I use Lama2 commercially?
A: Yes, the open licensing allows free commercial and research use with no royalties.

Q: What is the largest Lama2 model size?
A: The largest publicly available model is Lama2 with 70 billion parameters.

Q: Does Lama2 have content filtering?
A: Yes, Lama2 applies safety filters to block inappropriate or offensive content.

Q: Can Lama2 generate code?
A: No, Lama2 does not currently have code generation abilities unlike GPT-4.

Q: What data was used to train Lama2?
A: The model uses internet data up to September 2022 with additional human feedback tuning up to July 2023.

Q: What are some use cases for Lama2?
A: Lama2 can power chatbots, question answering, search, and other AI applications without needing external APIs.

Q: Who created Lama2?
A: Lama2 was developed by Anthropic in cooperation with Microsoft.

Q: Can I download and run Lama2 locally?
A: Yes, Lama2 can be downloaded to use for commercial products after filling out Anthropic's form.

Q: What impact does Lama2 have on the AI industry?
A: As an open source model rivaling GPT-3.5, Lama2 pressures closed models to become more transparent and freely usable.