If you’re not involved in machine learning (ML) or artificial intelligence (AI), chances are you’ve never heard of PyTorch. The open source software PyTorch ML from Meta (ex-Facebook) is however very popular in the creation of all kinds of AI applications. According to some, the only obstacle to its development until now was its close ties with Meta. It is now ancient history: the group chaired by Mark Zuckerberg handed over the code to a new group independent of the Linux Foundation, the PyTorch Foundation.
“We are evolving PyTorch, the open source AI framework led by Meta researchers, into a project governed by the Linux Foundation,” said the leader, noting that in this new framework, Meta and its partners , AMD, Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and Nvidia, will continue to push the project forward.
Why such a turnaround? After all, the program is a market leader, with over 150,000 projects built on GitHub with PyTorch. Meta is making this change for the same reason it released all of its AI programs in 2021: getting any ML tool, let alone the programs based on it, is slow, tedious, and difficult work. At this level of work, even Meta needs all the open source help it can get.
Meta does not abandon PyTorch
Before bringing PyTorch under the Linux Foundation, Meta invited anyone who wanted to join its PyTorch efforts.
As Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation, said at the Open Source Summit Europe in Dublin, Ireland, “PyTorch has grown to include a massive community of contributors and users under its focused leadership. on the community. The genius of PyTorch (and the merit of its maintainers) is that it is truly a fundamental platform for much of artificial intelligence and machine learning today, which acts like a real Swiss army knife” .
Going forward, the PyTorch Foundation will make decisions about its future development. This does not mean that Meta will stop using PyTorch. Far from it, Meta announced last year that it was ditching its other AI/ML efforts to play all its cards on PyTorch. As Facebook stated, we will “continue to invest in PyTorch and use it as the primary framework for our AI research and production applications within the company.”
Source: ZDNet.com