The artificial intelligence battlefield just got more interesting. Chinese tech titan Alibaba announced that it is releasing its powerful AI large language model (LLM), called Tongyi Qianwen, to third party developers and researchers. This pits the e-commerce giant squarely against US rivals like Meta in the race to dominate the future of AI.
On one hand, open sourcing Tongyi Qianwen allows Alibaba to get more users and helps spread adoption. But it also signals the company’s loftier ambitions in staking its claim as an AI leader, especially in its home court of China.
Tongyi Qianwen is actually pretty impressive. The large language model can generate human-like text in both English and Chinese. The version Alibaba is open sourcing, called Qwen-7B, packs 7 billion parameters – that’s geek speak for “it’s hella powerful.”
Developers can tap into Qwen-7B to build their own apps and conversational AI without having to create models from scratch. This is a huge leg up in terms of time and money. In fact, it could make Tongyi Qianwen the default choice for devs looking to leverage LLMs.
Of course, Alibaba isn’t doing this out of the goodness of its heart. By getting more users on Tongyi, it boosts the company’s cloud computing business. And if Tongyi gains steam, it could get added by players like Microsoft and Amazon to their cloud platforms too. So this is a smart and strategic play by Alibaba to own the future of Gen AI.
Of course, this also steps on the toes of Meta, which open sourced its Llama LLM earlier this year. And it potentially challenges the still popular ChatGPT and its creator OpenAI. So, it seems the battle for AI supremacy is on.
As an AI nerd, I’m thrilled to see barrier-free access to powerful systems like Tongyi Qianwen. This accelerates innovation and puts more brainpower in the hands of developers. But as the tech giants laser-focus on AI, it’s clear no one wants to be left in the dust.
The race is on to own the AI future. Game on.
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Read more: The AI Race Is On as Alibaba Open-Sources Its LLM Model
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