[542458]

I’d disagree wrt “modify”. There are all sorts of tools for modifying LLM weights (ie to remove refusals, remove layers or experts, merge models, finetune, and more) and a quick glance at huggingface or civit will show those in very active use.

I don’t think the hardware requirements are relevant. If a research lab publishes the code their particle collider runs under the GPL, that doesn’t make it not OSS even though they’re the only ones on the planet with the hardware to run it.

[tomjakubowski]

You can also edit binary distributions of models with means besides changing their weights. See "LLM Neuroanatomy: How I Topped the LLM Leaderboard Without Changing a Single Weight."

On the spectrum of:

  careful engineering--hacking--mad science

This kind of thing falls far towards the mad science end of the scale, but has proven effective.

https://dnhkng.github.io/posts/rys/