RedPajama vs. Llama 2

Foundation models, such as GPT-4, have propelled the field of artificial intelligence forward at an unprecedented pace; however, the most sophisticated models continue to be either restricted or only partially available to the public. To counteract this issue, the RedPajama initiative is focused on creating a suite of high-quality, completely open-source models. We are excited to share that we have successfully finished the first stage of this project: the recreation of the LLaMA training dataset, which encompasses over 1.2 trillion tokens. At present, a significant portion of leading foundation models is confined within commercial APIs, which limits opportunities for research and customization, especially when dealing with sensitive data. The pursuit of fully open-source models may offer a viable remedy to these constraints, on the condition that the open-source community can enhance the quality of these models to compete with their closed counterparts. Recent developments have indicated that there is encouraging progress in this domain, hinting that the AI sector may be on the brink of a revolutionary shift similar to what was seen with the introduction of Linux. The success of Stable Diffusion highlights that open-source alternatives can not only compete with high-end commercial products like DALL-E but also foster extraordinary creativity through the collaborative input of various communities. By nurturing a thriving open-source ecosystem, we can pave the way for new avenues of innovation and ensure that access to state-of-the-art AI technology is more widely available, ultimately democratizing the capabilities of artificial intelligence for all users.

We are excited to unveil the latest version of our open-source large language model, which includes model weights and initial code for the pretrained and fine-tuned Llama language models, ranging from 7 billion to 70 billion parameters. The Llama 2 pretrained models have been crafted using a remarkable 2 trillion tokens and boast double the context length compared to the first iteration, Llama 1. Additionally, the fine-tuned models have been refined through the insights gained from over 1 million human annotations. Llama 2 showcases outstanding performance compared to various other open-source language models across a wide array of external benchmarks, particularly excelling in reasoning, coding abilities, proficiency, and knowledge assessments. For its training, Llama 2 leveraged publicly available online data sources, while the fine-tuned variant, Llama-2-chat, integrates publicly accessible instruction datasets alongside the extensive human annotations mentioned earlier. Our project is backed by a robust coalition of global stakeholders who are passionate about our open approach to AI, including companies that have offered valuable early feedback and are eager to collaborate with us on Llama 2. The enthusiasm surrounding Llama 2 not only highlights its advancements but also marks a significant transformation in the collaborative development and application of AI technologies. This collective effort underscores the potential for innovation that can emerge when the community comes together to share resources and insights.