[nickff]

Are you saying that you think the US government is unpredictable and arbitrary, but that the People’s Republic of China is not? Do you remember all the PRoC’s strange and sudden policy shifts (e.g. steel, real estate, education, football/soccer, etc.)?

It seems to me that in the case of AI (as with many other modern technologies), you rely on vendor/creator support and updates to stay relevant, so the ‘next’ model matters more than the current one, and we have no idea whose next model will be open (and whose won’t).

[digitaltrees]

I interpret the comment as saying there are lots of viable models and it's now crystal clear personal cloud or local Ai is the only reliable path.

[baq]

Not OP and I wholly agree, but you can’t dismiss the fact that they are releasing those weights. Their agenda is quite obviously to make Anthropic and OpenAI CFOs sweat bullets, but it isn’t our problem as AI consumers, right?

[nickff]

Yes, I agree that it is possible that the 'open source model providers' are doing the equivalent of 'dumping' in an attempt to establish a dominant market position, or at least a foot-hold. I am generally a skeptic when it comes to the effectiveness of 'dumping' as a long-term strategy (as the producer tends to hemorrhage consumers when it increases prices), but some may see it as problematic.

[fnordpiglet]

Open weight models don’t allow central oversight. That’s the difference.

[nickff]

If you’re happy to use the current one forever, then yes. I was amending my comment above to address this when you posted yours.

[fnordpiglet]

I think for many practical purposes the frontier open weight models are almost universally good enough for most things. There may be greater and greater frontiers but at q certain point it becomes like IQ. Having a 150 IQ doesn’t mean you’ll be more successful at any particular task over someone with a 125 IQ. Indeed there’s a diminishing return on intelligence on many utility functions where being more intelligent yields more be same or worse ultimate outcomes. It might very well be the person with a 150 IQ could understand some extraordinarily complex and esoteric concepts faster, but it doesn’t mean with more effort the 125 IQ person can’t either; and sometimes that extra time spent yields better outcomes overall.

I suspect AI will be somewhat similar where even if the linear scaling laws continue to hold the practical utility of a model flattens for almost all conceivable use cases.

In some ways I already feel this has begun to happen. The marginal utility of opus class models and fable has in my perception begun to flatten. While I can tell the differences they aren’t earth shattering. I could continue to use the present models for the rest of my life and be ludicrously more productive simply by adapting within their constraints through ever more sophisticated applications.

What holds back the open weights IMO is hardware scaling and industrial production. As the enormous transfer of wealth in debt and equity markets unfolds with semiconductor and adjacent companies and the corresponding capital investments are made, and the eventual bubble pop leading to over capacity and market flooding, as well as advances in technology, math, techniques, and efficiencies, will make very large open weight models more directly attainable. This will also lead to chimera models that MOE very large models to get very close to the 1-2T parameter dense models, at which point I suspect utility for almost all uses is nearly fully saturated.

There will be areas where more capable models are needed but they will be frontier models on frontier problems. This, IMO, is inevitable, and without some criminalization of weights (see the attempts to criminalize encryption algorithms in the 20th century and all the wonderful tshirts that emerged). It’ll be harder to print a trillion parameter model on a shirt but I’m sure someone will try, as will governments try to keep us in our boxes slaving for food coupons and basic rights like health care.

[thatmf]

> Are you saying that you think the US government is unpredictable and arbitrary, but that the People’s Republic of China is not?

Why not both?

That seems the crux of the state we're currently in; what daylight there was between the two is quickly fading.

[spelk]

>Do you remember all the PRoC’s strange and sudden policy shifts (e.g. steel, real estate, education, football/soccer, etc.)?

I didn't realize I could download a Shanghai apartment.

[seviu]

Right now I rely on whoever that is opensourcing the models.

I wholeheartedly agree with what you said about China.

But I can’t shrug off the fact that fable was taken down within minutes for reasons that are childish and petty.

I am sorry but I can’t use any US AI if I don’t have the guarantee that I will be able to use it tomorrow.

And Trump showed us he is willing to take it out whenever he wants.

An opensource model on the contrary, I can host myself, or use a miriad of providers, mostly non chinese.

[jmaw]

> I am sorry but I can’t use any US AI if I don’t have the guarantee that I will be able to use it tomorrow.

To be fair this is every commercial model. We have already seen GHCP increase prices by anywhere from 10-100x (depending on usage). And old models get retired all the time. While these are not exactly the same as a cutting edge model being shut down, increasing prices a super high amount leads to effectively the same outcome.

[UncleOxidant]

> And Trump showed us he is willing to take it out whenever he wants.

Yes, the actions of this administration on Friday should have sent shockwaves through the market - a market that's currently "high on AI". How do you get a return on all of that AI investment if the administration can jump in at any time and say "Nope, you can't use this very advanced model!"? (the Iran "deal" over the weekend, I think helped cushion that blow, but eventually it's going to sink in)