The company’s developer conference Meta Connect 2024 took place on Wednesday. During the event, the social media giant unveiled several new artificial intelligence (AI) features and wearable devices. Additionally, Meta also reportedly announced a partnership with tech giant Arm on the creation of Special Small Language Models (SLM). These AI models are said to be used to power smartphones and other devices and introduce new ways of using these devices. The idea behind this is to provide on-device and edge computing options to keep AI inference fast.
According to a report from CNET, Meta and Arm are planning to create AI models that can perform more advanced tasks on devices. For example, AI can act as a virtual assistant on the device and make calls or click pictures. This isn’t too far-fetched because today, AI tools can already perform a ton of tasks like editing images and formatting emails.
However, the main difference is that users have to interact with the interface or type special commands to get the AI to perform these tasks. At the Meta event, the duo reportedly highlighted that they want to address this and make AI models more intuitive and responsive.
One way to do this would be to bring the AI model to the device or place the server very close to the device. The latter is also known as edge computing and is used by research institutions and large enterprises. Ragavan Srinivasan, vice president of product management for generative AI at Meta, told the publication that developing these new AI models is a good way to take advantage of this opportunity.
For this, the size of the AI model will have to be reduced. While META has developed language models (LLMs) as large as 90 billion parameters, these are not suitable for small devices or fast processing. Lama 3.2 1B and 3B models are considered ideal for this.
However, another issue is that AI models will also have to be equipped with new capabilities beyond simple text generation and computer vision. This is where the arm comes in. According to the report, Meta is teaming up with the tech giant to develop processor-optimized AI models that can adapt to the workflow of devices like smartphones, tablets, and even laptops. No other details about SLM have been shared at this time.
