[croemer]

Yes, obviously.

[WithinReason]

As an example, Grok 4 took $388M to train

[croes]

An open source Mac OS is still open source even if I can’t afford a Mac.

[HPsquared]

Compiling source code also takes computing resources, only the scale is different. It's a very close analogy: source code with training data, and compiled binaries with model weights.

The weights are literally a binary blob.

[WithinReason]

The weights are the modifiable representation. You modify them with gradient updates.

[swiftcoder]

Even though none of us could actually afford to train it?

[croes]

Yet, I couldn’t afford a PC to run the original Crysis when it came out, now the hardware isn’t an issue anymore

[croemer]

Some of us might be rich, or get funding, or in the future it could be useful when training is cheaper.

Open source has benefits even if you can run yourself. You can read the code for understanding/insights. Other labs could replicate/build on it.

[gpugreg]

> Some of us might be rich

I sure wish I had a few 100M of disposable income to train a frontier model.

> or in the future it could be useful when training is cheaper.

I do not think that physics will allow hardware getting that much faster. But maybe we will have different, cheaper architectures by then.

[Muromec]

If you would tell people at the start of 20th century how much energy we consume, they may not believe you or think it is wasteful.

[gpugreg]

Looks like global energy consumption has risen by an order of magnitude from 1900 to 2000: https://www.encyclopedie-energie.org/en/world-energy-consump...

Unfortunately, electricity prices did not fall by the same factor, so I fear that training a frontier model will still cause a an unsustainable dent in my monthly budget.

[eptcyka]

Maybe not now, but what about 10 years down the line?