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The unbearable cheapness of open weight models

jamesoclaire.com

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Re: The unbearable cheapness of open weight models

#31

Post by InsideOutSanta »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #18
jorisw wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Reach AGI', the same way SpaceX will put data centers in orbit. A pipe dream.

> will put data centers in orbit. A pipe dream. Cheap access to space was once a pipe dream. Reusable boosters were once a pipe dream. A new player beating Boeing to the ISS was once a pipe dream. LEO constellations were once a pipe dream. Launching thousands of satellites was once a pipe dream. You should know that a) they are already running "AI" chips on their current sats. and b) they are already producing kW of…

I don't think people's argument is that it's impossible to put data centers into space. The argument is that the downsides (radiation, cooling, maintenance, power) are so severe that it is pointless to do it at scale.

Re: The unbearable cheapness of open weight models

#32

Post by ForHackernews »

Jackobrien wrote: post #7

The giants knew this was coming, and soon 95% of AI tasks will be able to be done by open models (coding, research, cowork style work). So why pay a premium? Why use them at all? This leaves the labs with two options: 1) push the frontier in a way only massive scale can, and cash in on it (mythos level cyber security, recursive training, frontier science work). There’s big money for never before possible capabilities…

Google already owns the app layer, and hardware, and they are a frontier-level AI research firm.

I don't see how Anthropic or OpenAI survives being eaten by DeepSeek et al from the bottom of the stack and Google from the top.

Re: The unbearable cheapness of open weight models

#33

Post by IncreasePosts »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #18
jorisw wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Reach AGI', the same way SpaceX will put data centers in orbit. A pipe dream.

> will put data centers in orbit. A pipe dream. Cheap access to space was once a pipe dream. Reusable boosters were once a pipe dream. A new player beating Boeing to the ISS was once a pipe dream. LEO constellations were once a pipe dream. Launching thousands of satellites was once a pipe dream. You should know that a) they are already running "AI" chips on their current sats. and b) they are already producing kW of…

If just Elon was taking about data centers in space, you could take it with a grain of salt. But there are other serious players talking about it like Google and blue origin that it should be pretty clear it can't just be dismissed with "you didn't think about cooling!"

Re: The unbearable cheapness of open weight models

#34

Post by ForHackernews »

arikrahman wrote: post #6

With cache hit rates being effectively free, harnesses like Reasonix have let me do a month of work for less than 2 dollars. It's not even the subsidies making it cheap, American providers like Digital Ocean or Cloudflare host the same model with similar pricing.

I think this is very likely and something that everyone seems to be missing when valuing these AI firms. AI is not the new industrial revolution, it's the new cloud VM: a very useful commodity software offering.

Re: The unbearable cheapness of open weight models

#35

Post by trick-or-treat »

ben_w wrote: post #15
jorisw wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Reach AGI', the same way SpaceX will put data centers in orbit. A pipe dream.

I'm currently writing a blog post about data centres in orbit, and my current conclusion is that even though they can build one, they definitely can't put 1 million up there and would have better things to do if they could. AGI? Too loosely defined. They lack a lot of competences which humans recognise when we see them but find it hard to put into words; on the other hand what they can do they already do faster than…

Maybe you missed the part where starlink / orbiting datacenters don't really have to even make money as long as they partially fund rocket launch tests.

Or maybe you don't take Elon seriously when he talks about Mars.

Re: The unbearable cheapness of open weight models

#36

Post by ForHackernews »

odie5533 wrote: post #12
Jimega36 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reach AGI to leapfrog whoever is behind. Burn everything to get there faster.

If Anthropic announced AGI tomorrow, how much better would that model be than Fable 5? It's looking like the road to AGI is gradual and moat-less. Models seem capable of improving other models, and even without illegal distillations many are nipping at the heels of Anthropic.

What is an "illegal" distillation? Terms of service are not laws, and clearly copyright laws are no barriers to developing AI models.

Re: The unbearable cheapness of open weight models

#37

Post by anax32 »

Open weight and local hosting is far, far cheaper. In every respect. Even support is cheaper, over time.

However, it's difficult to sell this to businesses who want contracts and KPIs, not staff and commitments.

Regulated industries will favour the closed sources, either by choice or mandate. The interesting question is whether they will have better models, or worse models. History says they will receive a worse service, but continue anyway.

Re: The unbearable cheapness of open weight models

#39

Post by NitpickLawyer »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #33
NitpickLawyer wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> will put data centers in orbit. A pipe dream. Cheap access to space was once a pipe dream. Reusable boosters were once a pipe dream. A new player beating Boeing to the ISS was once a pipe dream. LEO constellations were once a pipe dream. Launching thousands of satellites was once a pipe dream. You should know that a) they are already running "AI" chips on their current sats. and b) they are already producing kW of…

If just Elon was taking about data centers in space, you could take it with a grain of salt. But there are other serious players talking about it like Google and blue origin that it should be pretty clear it can't just be dismissed with "you didn't think about cooling!"

Yeah, and there's already been tech demonstrators for this. Starcloud-1 launched in '25 (on a F9) and demoed a CotS H100 in a ~60kg bus w/ 1kW of power. They ran inference on a "gemini" model (probably something small) and trained a GPT2 version LLM as a tech demonstrator.

Re: The unbearable cheapness of open weight models

#40

Post by NitpickLawyer »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #31
NitpickLawyer wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> will put data centers in orbit. A pipe dream. Cheap access to space was once a pipe dream. Reusable boosters were once a pipe dream. A new player beating Boeing to the ISS was once a pipe dream. LEO constellations were once a pipe dream. Launching thousands of satellites was once a pipe dream. You should know that a) they are already running "AI" chips on their current sats. and b) they are already producing kW of…

I don't think people's argument is that it's impossible to put data centers into space. The argument is that the downsides (radiation, cooling, maintenance, power) are so severe that it is pointless to do it at scale.

Go back to the megathreads when this came up. Even here on HN. Plenty of people used the argument that it can't be done, for various reasons.

And my point was that at one point or the other there were many "downsides" for all the tech that SpaceX already has. Reusable boosters were seen as "uneconomical" and "pointless unless they can fly 10 times" by industry experts. They're now flying 30+times a booster.

LEO constellations were similarly "full of downsides" plus "all the companies that tried it went bankrupt in the 90s", so "it's pointless". And so on.

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