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Apertus – Open Foundation Model for Sovereign AI

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Re: Apertus – Open Foundation Model for Sovereign AI

#61

Post by MrDrMcCoy »

azinman2 wrote: post #33
dTal wrote: post #20

It's good that there is a movement for open LLMs, but it's not where the battleground is right now . The battleground is local vs service LLMs, and we are losing that battle badly despite all the software being here now and viable, entirely because UX sucks. How many normal people do you know who use "ChatGPT"? A lot, probably. How many even know what "Gemma" is, let alone have downloaded llama.cpp, a GGUF file from…

> We are sleepwalking into slavery. That’s a bit hyperbolic…

Some hyperbole is useful. The problem is real and serious, though short of the specific verbiage.

Re: Apertus – Open Foundation Model for Sovereign AI

#64

Post by trollbridge »

dTal wrote: post #20

It's good that there is a movement for open LLMs, but it's not where the battleground is right now . The battleground is local vs service LLMs, and we are losing that battle badly despite all the software being here now and viable, entirely because UX sucks. How many normal people do you know who use "ChatGPT"? A lot, probably. How many even know what "Gemma" is, let alone have downloaded llama.cpp, a GGUF file from…

Normal people can go open an account at DeepSeek or Xiaomi and chat away for free. Or, for that matter, a couple other models like z.ai's (GLM-5.2 isn't in the free tier, though, but neither is GPT-5.5-Pro), or Qwen, which does have 3.7-Max for free with no account on their chatbot interface.

Yes, I realise this isn't "running a local model", but it's using models that can be grabbed and run locally. For my pipelines, I feel far more confidence when I use an open model (even one like GLM-5.2 that would be expensive for me to run) since I have a backup plan if the hosted/cloud option becomes unworkable for me. If that happens to me with Opus, I have zero options.

Re: Apertus – Open Foundation Model for Sovereign AI

#65

Post by trollbridge »

8note wrote: post #29
dTal wrote: post #20

It's good that there is a movement for open LLMs, but it's not where the battleground is right now . The battleground is local vs service LLMs, and we are losing that battle badly despite all the software being here now and viable, entirely because UX sucks. How many normal people do you know who use "ChatGPT"? A lot, probably. How many even know what "Gemma" is, let alone have downloaded llama.cpp, a GGUF file from…

normal people dont really have the hardware to run local models

Gamers can run Qwen 3.6 quantised models now.

You would also be shocked what's possible on a 64GB Mac Studio, which isn't that unattainable.

Re: Apertus – Open Foundation Model for Sovereign AI

#66

Post by MangoCoffee »

dofm wrote: post #15
maxloh wrote: post #13

Great to see more fully open LLMs. I think a problem with open-weight models is that while you can improve them, you are not going to create the next generation of LLMs by fine-tuning. We are at the mercy of frontier labs for access to SOTA LLMs. For example, Anthropic recently started requiring identity verification for Claude [0], same for OpenAI [1]. If one day China's distillation labs stop releasing their LLMs a…

> We are at the mercy of frontier labs for access to SOTA LLMs I disagree with this use of SOTA, and this topic is why. Anthropic and OpenAI have “cutting-edge” models. These are beyond the state of the art but they are closed, secretive, hard to quantify. The “state of the art” is open source, open weights models that can be inspected, studied, shared and critiqued, because that is what is meant by “the art” —- it i…

SOTA LLMs is less important than cheap token and Chinese AI labs is releasing model that is only about 6-8 months behind American AI labs.

Chinese's model like GLM is getting better for coding task and its cheaper. Microsoft Github copilot have to switch billing to token based. the cost of AI have increased since agent come into play. whoever can offer cheaper token to do task will win.

even Microsoft is looking into Deepseek for cheap token.

https://www.axios.com/2026/06/16/microsoft-copilot-cowork-to...

Re: Apertus – Open Foundation Model for Sovereign AI

#67

Post by trollbridge »

idiotsecant wrote: post #23
dTal wrote: post #20

It's good that there is a movement for open LLMs, but it's not where the battleground is right now . The battleground is local vs service LLMs, and we are losing that battle badly despite all the software being here now and viable, entirely because UX sucks. How many normal people do you know who use "ChatGPT"? A lot, probably. How many even know what "Gemma" is, let alone have downloaded llama.cpp, a GGUF file from…

Better UX does not buy you a datacenter farm to train state of the art cutting edge models. Right now the only people who can do that are the technobility class.

The same used to be true of being able to program computers and compile software.

Of course the frontier will always be unattainable, but that's like pointing out that I couldn't buy my own Cray supercomputer.

Re: Apertus – Open Foundation Model for Sovereign AI

#68

Post by trollbridge »

anon373839 wrote: post #19
maxloh wrote: post #13

Great to see more fully open LLMs. I think a problem with open-weight models is that while you can improve them, you are not going to create the next generation of LLMs by fine-tuning. We are at the mercy of frontier labs for access to SOTA LLMs. For example, Anthropic recently started requiring identity verification for Claude [0], same for OpenAI [1]. If one day China's distillation labs stop releasing their LLMs a…

> China's distillation labs This notion that Chinese labs are merely distilling frontier models is quite an unwarranted slur. Those labs have published WAY more useful research than US labs on RL techniques, novel model architectures, training pipelines, etc. They have also hit intelligence-per-parameter densities that US labs have yet to attain. Apart from that, merely training a model on outputs from another model,…

It's one of those lies people tell themselves to make themselves feel better. "Oh, they're just copying my stuff."

Chinese labs are basically just telling everyone, out in the open, what they're doing and how to do it, and the answer from American frontier labs is "Well, they couldn't possibly be getting the results they're getting without just distilling our models," and the American labs aren't even trying to do some of the stuff like DS's aggressive caching to get costs down.

Re: Apertus – Open Foundation Model for Sovereign AI

#69

Post by trollbridge »

anon373839 wrote: post #60
Vaslo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently watched a video for one of these “Chinese Models” it kept insisting it was Claude when the user asked. Sorry, there’s no “slur” here but legit suspicion.

These anecdotes where someone gets the model to claim it is X model are meaningless. (Claude also has been known to claim it is Deepseek when asked in Chinese.)

As anyone who's tried to write an AGENTS.md that says "Place an Assisted-by: git trailer that contains the harness you're using:whatever model this is"; such a naive approach often results in a seemingly random model.

Re: Apertus – Open Foundation Model for Sovereign AI

#70

Post by toss1 »

dofm wrote: post #28
sockaddr wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but I think you’re requirement that something only be “the art” if any arbitrary person can critique it is off. The frontier labs are working on the state of the art but it’s just art that you aren’t allowed to see. Unfortunately.

It is work using the principles of the art, obviously. But "state of the art" implies the highest state of general availability, not just in terms of access to some product, but of use of the ideas, concepts, methodologies etc. Anthropic and OpenAI have "cutting edge" models; the state of the art is behind the cutting edge. The state of the art is the best open source, open weights model available. More or less by de…

That's an interesting and possibly useful distinction , but it seems unique to you. Spreading it as "We should categorize the AIs this way" would be a good argument.

But the way SOTA is generally understood by other users of the language, it refers to exactly the team, technology, & techniques defining the cutting edge in any field, regardless of the whether the technology & techniques are available outside of that team...

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