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> Ignoring for the moment issues of what "counts" as open, won't open models rapidly advance due to stuff like this in ways that it's less possible for the proprietary ones to do? This is exactly how Linux & Wikipedia, for example, overtook their "frontiers", right?

I suspect the advantage that catapulted Linux ahead of the establishment was less technical potential and talent and more organizational advantage. That's not to diminish the technical talent of the Linux crew, but them being unencumbered gave them more degrees of freedom. The rest is history.

So as long as the AI companies don't succumb to "big company" dynamics, they can outlead. To wit: Open AI and Anthropic are kicking Google's ass.

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I think people make mistake here, google’s approach is not to spend $2.3 on every $1.0 earned, they’re riding on serving to masses “luna”, they absolutely have way more powerful models internally but they don’t clutter their infrastructure with fragile and costly intelligence-of-size inference frontier. I think “underdog” perception is illusory/temporary, not stupidity - calculated, conscious, longer term bet.
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Where do you get this "not to spend $2.3 on ever $1.0 earned" from?

Google might not have compelling frontier offerings, their chat harness is complete garbage compared to any other lab (in large part due to a bizarrely badly designed harness where something like code execution requires the prompt to undergo some sort of classification step, no idea what they are doing).

But they absolutely kill in terms of usage offerings. Google lets one subscription be used by *SIX* different google accounts on a family plan.

Plus I currently literally get *$40/month* of Gemini API credits on developer.google.com because they gave me a $10/month grant 4 times.

They give you 200 cloud compute units on google collab, this literally lets you spin up an H100 for around 40 hrs or something if you want to try spinning up local models.

You get Jules (huge allotment btw), Image gen, Video gen, Music Gen, antigravity usage, 5 TB of cloud storage, Notebook LLM...

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I tend to agree, but I also should highlight how expensive this shit really is.

in one month, Google actually went cash-negative. [0] even still, they are subsidizing their stuff a lot less, have the most opaque and variable limits, and increase adoption through bundling and shuffling features. I can't even share my Google One storage without subscribing to a Google AI plan anymore, but previously any plan except Google One Lite was shareable.

if you tell me that's not enough to go after frontier, then how much money are Anthropic and OpenAI burning?

[0]: https://www.techspot.com/news/113214-google-records-first-ne...

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Diff people have diff motives to experiment, then new work is done on top of stuff that "hits" in a way no one anticipated. Then work gets piled on top in a way that might make it hard to port
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> then new work is done on top of stuff that "hits" in a way no one anticipated.

Indeed. And when you have freedom to play, you are able to find new stepping stones that you didn't anticipate. And you can combine stepping stones in new ways to make new discoveries.

Greatness cannot be planned.

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No, because close labs/models borrow but don't contribute back.
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This was exactly the crux of Nathan Lambert's recent testimony to a group of US Congressional members/staff: https://www.interconnects.ai/p/the-current-balance-of-power-...
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Won't the "frontier" labs figure out whatever techniques were used and apply them to their closed models?
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Like how the last 2 decades of tech companies are thinly veiled open source pilfering into business units.
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"Oh darn, you know that thing I made and released with explicit, precise language defining who can use it and what, if any, restrictions apply? Well now someone is using it in complete accordance with those conditions I set out, and that's somehow making me upset"
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If they can keep up.

The lock-in is less pronounced as it is with AWS or MS.

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The difference between contributing to OS and AI, is that the first is a hobby alternative to woodworking or hiking, while the other can easily bootstrap you a company you can get millions in investment, at least for time being.
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Yes, absolutely, but only if people keep contributing in the open.
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not necessarily, just knowing something is possible will motivate others to achieve it somehow. Which is why there are so many LLMs and OAI doesn't have a monopoly
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