The Hugging Face Community: A $10+ Billion Rival to Open AI and ChatGPT
Discover the Open-Source Community Revolutionizing the Future of AI
There is more to the current AI landscape than just Open AI (the company behind ChatGPT) or the in-house AIs developed by the big tech names like Google's Bard.
Lo and behold, Hugging Face! It is an open-source community that has accumulated a massive organizational user base and many more individual believers in its product and mission.
Consider this post a quick primer on the current big players of AI, with a focus on Open AI and Hugging Face.
Bit of background:
At the time of writing, Open AI's reported valuation is $29 billion, with Microsoft investing in almost half of it. In comparison, Hugging Face had a reported valuation of up to $10 billion in November 2022. Now that the industry has grown exponentially these past four months, it wouldn't surprise me if the updated valuation was closer to $15-20 billion today.
Contrary to what Open AI's name implies, they are definitely not open-source. If you have spent any time in a tech-based community, you have likely heard this term being thrown around.
For those who haven't, open-source simply refers to software whose source code is freely available to the public. Anyone can access, view, modify, and distribute the code without legal or financial limitations.
So why do so many developers choose to do this?
Well, open-sourcing allows for collaborative innovation at a lightning pace, all while maintaining transparency for the betterment of society as a whole.
Yeah but what have they done for me lately?
Like myself and millions of others, you're probably already using an OpenAI tool in some form. It's a no-brainer upon discovering its powerful parameters and extremely simple-to-use interface.
ChatGPT 3.5 also remains free to use, so why would anyone consider an open-source alternative on Hugging Face, especially when they can feel clunky and be riddled with technical jargon?
Well, I, for one, am increasingly encountering the limitations of ChatGPT 3.5. Don’t get me wrong; it's still a powerful tool, but it seems like the world is starting to lose interest and is moving on to the newer, more potent version, which is 4.0. However, upgrading to 4.0 is not free, setting you back $20 a month.
Coupled with increasingly stricter ethical restrictions enforced by Open AI, for better or worse, you will find yourself progressively more limited the further you stray from mainstream categories and use cases.
Now, I'm not saying we should all ditch ChatGPT for one of the unrestricted open-source alternatives today. Despite open-source models such as GPT-Neo, GPT-J, and ChatGLM proving to outperform ChatGPT 3.5 in some metrics, there is still further to go in terms of being able to run these models smoothly on our consumer-grade PCs.
My suggestion is that we should pay close attention to the advancements happening on Hugging Face, as the unrestricted models are becoming more efficient and light-weight by the day. I have witnessed exceptionally innovative and tailored projects in the realm of open-source imagery and vision, where unfettered creativity is pioneering new trails across a multitude of industries.
How do I access Hugging Face?
Hugging Face is free for anyone to use and browse to their heart's content. However, having the right hardware to run these models is another question.
If you do own a high-end gaming PC or GPU, the good news is that you are already spoiled for choice with open-source models that can be run locally on your hardware. Regular PCs and laptops might succeed, depending on their specifications. Alternatively, it is possible to access these models on third-party GPU or TPU providers, but not without quite a bit of tinkering.
If the above options are not suitable for you, then it is unfortunately just a waiting game for now. But fear not, my friends, I don't imagine it will be a long one.
NOTE: I intend to write more specific guides on how to set up on Hugging Face and how to use or run specific models in future posts. Feel free to send me an email if you have any requests. 🙂