What is Falcon 180B, and why is it generating so much hype in the AI community?

In the evolving world of artificial intelligence, large language models and generative AI tools are paving the way for endless innovation. The demand for versatile and powerful language models is increasing at an incredible rate as companies strive to embed intelligence into everything from their communication and collaboration tools to contact center processes.

We’ve already seen LLM technology making waves in the workplace with new innovations like Zoom AI Companion, Microsoft Copilot, and Google Bard. Now, a new open LLM solution from the Technology Innovation Institute (TII) is poised to disrupt the industry yet again.

Falcon 180B, the advanced iteration of the TII’s flagship LLM, was introduced on September 6th, 2023, and it’s already breaking performance records. Here’s everything you need to know about the solution and what it can do for businesses.

What is Falcon 180B? The Basics

Falcon 180B is an open-access large language model that builds on the previous releases in the “Falcon” family. It’s a scaled-up version of the Falcon 40B model, an AI solution that ascended to the top of the Hugging Face LLM Leaderboard in May 2023.

Falcon 40B was one of the first open-source LLM solutions designed for researchers and commercial users, and 180B takes the functionality of that model to the next level.

Large Language models are currently forming the backbone of numerous AI-driven applications, from virtual assistants and chatbots to machine translation and sentiment analysis tools. They’re also a core component of many collaborative apps companies use today, such as Google Duet AI.

Unfortunately, many developers still struggle to build models that can excel in various language tasks. Researchers and innovators often encounter model size, versatility, and training data limitations. As a result, the LLM landscape is somewhat fragmented, with very few one-size-fits-all solutions.

Falcon 180B aims to deliver a quantum leap in language model generation. It boasts exceptional performance, thanks to 180 billion parameters, and distinguishes itself from the competition with greater accessibility and versatility. Unlike closed-source models, like GPT-4, Falcon 180B is specifically designed for research and commercial use.

How Does Falcon 180B Work?

As mentioned above, the Falcon 180B is an upgraded version of TII’s previous Falcon 40B model. It’s an auto-regressive language model that uses an optimized transformer architecture. According to the TII team, the solution was trained on 3.5 trillion data tokens, including web data from RefinedWeb and Amazon SageMaker.

The LLM features a custom distributed training codebase (Gigatron) that leverages 3D parallelism with ZeRO and custom Trion kernels. The technology took a lot of work to develop, using up to 4096 GPUs simultaneously for 7 million GPU hours. This makes Falcon 180B around 2.5 times larger than competing models like Llama 2.

Currently, two versions of the model are available: 180B and 180b-Chat. The standard version is a raw, pre-trained model, which companies can fine-tune to suit their use cases. Alternatively, the chat version is ideal for managing generic instructions. TII says the Chat model is already fine-tuned on instruction, chat data sets, and several large-scale conversational datasets.

If all that sounds incredibly confusing, Falcon 180B is an ultra-powerful language model that can adapt to various tasks such as coding or knowledge testing.

What is Falcon 180B? The Performance

Strengthening the UAE’s position in the burgeoning AI market, Falcon 180B promises state-of-the-art results that transcend many of the solutions already in the current market. The tech has topped the Hugging Face leaderboard for pre-trained open-access models.

It scores better than proprietary solutions like Google’s PaLM-2 (the model powering Bard). Compared to the top closed-source LLMs, 180B falls only slightly behind GPT-4 from OpenAI. Falcon 180B’s incredible performance is a direct result of its extensive training.

The vast corpus of text fed into the model gives it an unparalleled ability to understand language and context. It can excel in language tasks, such as proficiency assessments and reasoning. It could even become a powerful tool for training the next generation of Gen-AI bots.

What makes the solution even more impressive is its open architecture. By offering companies and developers access to a model with such a vast parameter set, TII is empowering researchers to explore new horizons in language processing. The model’s competitive performance opens the door to endless opportunities across healthcare, finance, education, and more.

The team behind the solution said they developed the system to support their vision of a future where everyone can access the transformative power of AI. Unlike most AI innovators, TII wants to democratize large language models and empower companies to build more advanced tools.

Potential Issues

So, what is Falcon 180B not so great at? It certainly has a lot of potential benefits, from exceptional power and performance to incredible versatility. However, there are a couple of flaws. For instance, Falcon 180B (the core model) is a very raw solution. It hasn’t undergone any advanced alignment or tuning, which means it can sometimes produce “problematic outputs,” according to TII.

That may be part of the reason why TII has allowed commercial access to the model under “restrictive conditions.” The company also encourages developers and researchers using the model to fine-tune the system with additional training and alignment guardrails.

The base version of the service also lacks any prompt format. Unlike 180B-Chat, the base version of Falcon 180B isn’t a conversational model trained with instructions. It can’t generate conversational responses to queries like ChatGPT.

On the plus side, the Chat-focused version of the model does follow a straightforward conversational structure. You’ll be able to use prompts to interact with the solution, just like you would if you were talking to Bard or CoPilot on Microsoft Teams.

How to Access Falcon 180B

Both the standard Falcon 180B standard model and Falcon 180B-Chat are available through HuggingFace and the TII website. You can start talking to the chat version of the app here, although it’s worth noting you’ll only be getting an experimental preview.

With HuggingFace transformers, companies and developers can leverage various tools, such as training and interference scripts and examples, integrations, assisted generation, and scaling support. You will have to accept the “terms of use” imposed by TII.

Amazon Web Services also recently introduced another way for companies to experiment with the Falcon 180B foundation model. Business users can access the Amazon SageMaker JumpStart service to deploy the model with a single click and experiment with machine learning models and algorithms. There’s a complete step-by-step guide to the service here.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that the full model is pretty huge. Inference requires about 640GB of memory, and even compact versions of the solution will struggle to work with most computing systems. If you were to run the system constantly, you could easily spend tens of thousands of dollars a month on computing power.

Looking Forward with Falcon

As demand for large language models grows and companies continue to discover the benefits of generative AI in workplaces, solutions like 180B can potentially change the landscape.

The model is an excellent example of what can be achieved in the AI landscape through collaboration and transparency. With Falcon 180B and similar initiatives, the future of AI could be far more inclusive and collaborative.

While the solution may be a little complex and expensive, it offers developers and researchers a unique opportunity. Falcon 180B’s license permits commercial usage and allows organizations to control training and keep their data in their chosen infrastructure. It offers more ownership over new models than alternatives like GPT-4.

According to TII, the launch of Falcon 180B exemplifies the company’s commitment to advancing the frontiers of AI. It could herald a new era of generative intelligence, where the potential for scientific advancement is enhanced through open access to new technology.



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