Alibaba says new AI model Qwen2 bests Meta's Llama 3 in tasks like maths and coding

Alibaba Group Holding, the e-commerce giant that is investing heavily in generative artificial intelligence (AI), has updated its open-source AI models with claims of besting Meta Platforms' Llama 3 model in certain tasks.

Alibaba Cloud on Friday launched Qwen2 - the second iteration of its open-source Tongyi Qianwen family of large language models (LLM), the technology behind chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT - with a series of updates including multilingual pre-training and an expanded the context window. That means it now allows for much longer queries and answers, putting in it the league of the world's most powerful open source LLMs.

Qwen2 comes in five variations. The high-end Qwen2-72B model consistently offered better results than Meta's Llama 3-70B - the strongest open-source AI model from the Facebook owner - in various benchmark tests, according to Alibaba. Tests include maths, coding, natural and social sciences, engineering and the humanities, the company said in a post published to the model's official GitHub page.

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Alibaba, which owns the South China Morning Post, has launched Qwen2 just one month after unveiling Tongyi Qianwen 2.5, which is closed source. The company said at the time that model performs better in various Chinese capabilities than GPT-4, OpenAI's most advanced model, which is also closed source.

The five variations of Alibaba's Qwen2, from the more nimble Qwen2-0.5B to its most sophisticated Qwen2-72B, have between 490 million and 72.7 billion parameters. They are also trained on 27 languages, in addition to Chinese and English: nine from Europe, four from the Middle East, and 14 from Asia.

The rapid follow-up launch of a new AI model, with capabilities matching leading global models, reflects the confidence that the Chinese firm has in funnelling an increasing amount of resources into an AI race that has engulfed much of the tech industry.

Many other Chinese companies, from the biggest tech giants to myriad start-ups, have been forging ahead in their own LLM development efforts, recently igniting a domestic price war.

Shenzhen-based social media and video gaming giant Tencent Holdings announced its own dedicated chatbot in late May called Yuanbao, backed by the company's latest Hunyuan LLM. Tencent said its home-grown model has gone through a series of enhancements since its launch last September.

Hunyuan has been baked into more than 600 business scenarios across Tencent's organisations, as it aims to use AI to help boost efficiency. Alibaba is also looking to leverage AI to help transform businesses.

Alibaba.com, the e-commerce giant's business-to-business cross-border sourcing platform, has recently introduced its own AI-powered tools to help connect sellers and buyers to boost sales, Zhang Kuo, the platform's president, told the Post in a recent interview.

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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