[NitpickLawyer]

Yeah, but the biggest plus for open models is that they can never be taken away. In other words, whatever capabilities they reach (even if there will never be another model), those stay forever. That can't be said for API-based models where a provider can sunset models whenever they feel like (i.e. gpt5-mini will soon be gone, and replaced by a more expensive 5.4-mini, same for goog, etc).

And there will always be incentivised parties that release models. Nvda for one has every incentive to keep the nemotron line going, as they're directly profiting from people running this. And the models aren't really far from open SotA anyway.

Goog will probably continue to release the small models, since they'll use them for browser stuff anyway, and know that they'll leak. So for them it's a win-win to release the small models and gain some dev market share.

And the chinese labs also have incentives to keep releasing models, and will likely continue to get gov support to do so (yay commercial wars between nations).

[felooboolooomba]

> they can never be taken away

Your right to 3d print whatever you want is about to be taken away (in California).

What software you can run on your computer can already be restricted.

Absolutely everything can be taken away. The simplest way to remove open models is probably to declare them a tool that terrorists could use. Crazy? Yes, the world is totally crazy these days.

[redox99]

That only affects people in California. Whereas Fable being shut down affects people all over the world.

[anticorporate]

There's also, importantly, a distinction between what are told we can no longer use, and what can actually be taken away.

Open source and open hardware can be called illegal by a government, but, if we collectively invest our energy into open alternatives, they can't be taken away in the same sense. I can build a RepRap printer and I can use a local AI model. It's on all of us to make sure that the open alternatives are viable, maybe in the current global political reality now more than ever.

Making something illegal isn't a disincentive for everyone. When they start banning books, some of us start assembling printing presses.

[echoangle]

Believe me, if the government wants to stop you from having access to something like that, they could do it. Just give people some incentive to report you and make really harsh punishments and everyone will be thinking really hard about how bad they want have access.

[vitally3643]

Just like declaring piracy illegal stopped piracy and removed pirated materials from everyone's computers.

Everything cannot, in fact, be taken away. Don't propagandize yourself. Some things, like information, are free. Not even China can prevent all its citizens from accessing Western internet. USGov simply does not have the resources to find and audit every hard drive and USB stick in the country for illegal files. The internet cannot be censored 100% without literally cutting every cable and confiscating every radio.

The software that runs on my computer cannot, in fact, be restricted. It can be declared illegal, but there literally is no mechanism by which it can be enforced other than a government goon standing over my shoulder 24/7.

Some freedoms really cannot be removed without utterly implausible amounts of effort. Arguing otherwise is helping to erode freedom. So stop it.

[Simran-B]

Remote attestation?

[advael]

On PCs, the best you could really do is restrict access to certain websites on certain boxes with TPMs the users can't disable. Remote attestation can lock people out of your stuff, but not out of their own stuff. For that you need control of the device. Of course, most mobile phones aren't easy for the user to have control of, but most PCs still are, so long as you scrub the rootkits (e.g. windows) off 'em

[jgalt212]

> What software you can run on your computer can already be restricted.

Are laws that are inherently unenforceable even laws?

[jfim]

True, but the capabilities and knowledge of that model are also frozen in time, so the value of that model declines over time.

A model that writes code without knowledge of any language or library changes for half a decade is less useful. A 2021 era chatgpt would be quite quaint in 2026.

Right now the Chinese labs might have incentives to release their models for free, and maybe Google is happy to release open weights today, but I'm sure there are already bean counters at Google salivating at the idea of having Gemini in Chrome as part of a Google AI monthly subscription just like YouTube premium and other Google subscriptions.

[api]

Fine tuning and updating is far cheaper than training from scratch.

[UncleOxidant]

> Nvda for one has every incentive to keep the nemotron line going

They're releases so far have been kind of lackluster compared to Qwen and other Chinese models. My suspicion is that Nvidia won't be releasing models that appear to compete with frontier models because that would upset their big customers.