Regardless of Mark Zuckerberg hailing Meta’s Llama AI mannequin as among the many finest in tech, his firm is completely satisfied to additionally use a rival when wanted.
Meta’s inner coding device, Metamate, incorporates OpenAI’s GPT-4 mannequin, alongside Meta’s personal Llama mannequin, to make the device extra helpful for builders and different Meta worker who use it, two individuals who have used the device advised Fortune. OpenAI’s mannequin has been part of Metamate since not less than early this yr.
The folks, a present and a former Meta worker who requested anonymity for concern of retribution from Meta, famous they discover Metamate useful. It seems to tug solutions to coding questions or prompts from Llama or GPT-4, they stated, relying on the type of question or how an worker makes use of the device.
“It’s one of many higher genAI issues they’ve executed,” one of many individuals who used the device stated of Meta’s efforts in generative AI. Metamate is just like different AI coding instruments like Microsoft’s GitHub CoPilot or Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet.
Individually, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the big philanthropic group run by Zuckerberg and his spouse, Priscilla Chan, can be an OpenAI buyer, two folks conversant in that entity advised Fortune. CZI is growing an “academic” genAI device based mostly on ChatGPT with some extra customization, or what’s sometimes called a “wrapper” of genAI tech. Earlier this yr, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, was named to a brand new AI advisory board at CZI.
A spokesman for Meta declined to remark. Representatives of CZI didn’t reply to emails searching for remark.
Whereas it’s common for an organization deploying genAI instruments for his or her workforce to depend on multiple mannequin, Zuckerberg has positioned Meta as a key participant within the mannequin wars. It’s a struggle most corporations are waging towards OpenAI, which launched ChatGPT two years in the past and kicked off a race to catch up as a way to acquire a foothold in what’s extensively thought of to be a brand new period of tech. Zuckerberg has spent the final yr advertising Llama as an “open supply” various that’s nearly as good or higher than utterly closed fashions, like these from OpenAI and Google.
When Meta launched a brand new model of Llama mid-year, the CEO stated it was” aggressive with essentially the most superior fashions and main in some areas.” By subsequent yr, Zuckerberg declared, the Llama mannequin will likely be “essentially the most superior within the trade.”
However, a device like Metamate, and its underlying Llama mannequin, nonetheless wants assistance from one other like GPT-4 to carry out effectively. And it doesn’t matter that Llama is among the world’s largest fashions, with the newest model pretrained on trillions of tokens, the person bits of data fed into an LLM, and 4 occasions extra pc code than it’s predecessor.
One of many sources who spoke to Fortune agreed that the present model of Metamate, initially dubbed Code Compose, is useful in technical work at Meta, noting it’s “not less than nearly as good as an intern.” Translation: It’s good at fundamental coding however not for extra advanced engineering work.
Nonetheless, a facet impact of AI’s helpfulness is that high executives assume they want fewer employees. “It’s a part of what spurs layoffs,” the particular person added.
Certainly, Meta has incrementally laid off scores of employees this yr after slicing greater than 20,000 staff between 2022 and 2023.
Are you a Meta worker or somebody with perception or a tip to share? Contact Kali Hays securely by means of Sign at +1-949-280-0267 or at kali.hays@fortune.com.
