I strongly prefer a world where open models "win," that said...
replyI don't understand how we will sustain an ecosystem of open models like the one that exists today. My thoughts go down this path every time I try to put the pieces together:
- Many open models depend on high quality frontier models as a distillation input
- US closed frontier models drive China's open model strategy despite the business model for open models being somewhat fuzzy
- What is the business model that benefits from open weights, exactly? How do their vendors recoup infrastructure and training costs?
I would be grateful to be enlightened on this topic.
Wouldn’t be that different from open source software, which has been very successful in many circles.
replyYou make money from value-add on top of the models not the models themselves.
Open source software does not require trillions of dollars in R&D to produce the next iteration
replyYeah but open source is often a few guys working on their free time, or a large company open sourcing libraries that they wouldn't be able to sell anyway, or donations from corporations that are at best in the order of a million dollars.
replyFor frontier models you have players investing billions.