Live data from Hacker News

The state of open source AI

stateofopensource.ai

231–240 of 379 posts

Re: The state of open source AI

#231

Speculation: open models is what will kill Anthropic and OpenAI. Hyperscalers can run the models without a licensing fee. Apple can make them smaller and put them on the device. The frontier models are an edge and a liability. They're astronomically expensive to train. Without them, their models will fade into obscurity. Their marketing depends on people believing the models are meaningfully different, as people have…

Speculation: Anthropic and and OpenAI become more like hedge funds, keeping their models to themselves, using their them and their compute for market/event prediction, internal tech development, and AI self improvement. I already wonder if that is what Google is doing. Why release your best models to help the competition? Their published models are good enough for 99% of consumers, and they can leverage their market…

Except Deepseek going in opposite direction: from hedge fund to an ai model provider.

Re: The state of open source AI

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize OpenAI survived for years without LLMs, right? There is still more AI research they can do as a lab even if they stop experimenting with LLMs.

I think they didnt have the amount of debt /negative cashflow as they do now.

That is on OpenAI Group PBC. If that bankrupts it doesn't bankrupt OpenAI, Inc.

Re: The state of open source AI

#233
post #60

Speculation: open models is what will kill Anthropic and OpenAI. Hyperscalers can run the models without a licensing fee. Apple can make them smaller and put them on the device. The frontier models are an edge and a liability. They're astronomically expensive to train. Without them, their models will fade into obscurity. Their marketing depends on people believing the models are meaningfully different, as people have…

I'm a bit skeptical of the token cost/ROI for all models, but sunk costs are sunk. It has the feel of self-improving super-intelligence or bust to me. If you get that, the frontier model(s) run away with a faster exponential. It's a bit like semi with Moore's Law with silicon, GaAs could never catch up. If you don't get it, the fast followers crush the high investment and there's no moat. Not like they can enforce co…

There's a world where frontier models run away with a faster exponential and still go bust due to being outcompeted on efficiency.

There's a point past which "intelligence" stops mattering as much, and IMO we're already there.

Consider which would be more useful (and profitable for its creator): a model that is 3x/5x/10x as "intelligent" as Mythos, for whatever your favorite yardstick of intelligence is? Or a model that is as "intelligent" as Opus 4.5, but can run at reasonable speed on a typical consumer laptop/cell phone?

Re: The state of open source AI

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define technofascism lol. Fascism was laid out by Mussolini in the 1920s - it amounts to the idolatry of the state. "All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state." B Mussolini Also defined as Corporatism: the union of state and corporate power. Which country do you think is closer to Mussolini's model ?

I think the term 'techno' in 'technofascism' is doing the work here, because--just as you claim that historical fascism is the idolatry of the state--technofascism is the idolatry of technology and intelligence. Modern accelerationism, as espoused today by people like Marc Andreessen in his Techno-Optimist Manifesto, is really just another rehash of Italian Futurism, which was closely intertwined with Italian Fascism…

Fascism is not merely idolatry of the state. That is simply its ideological mask, its method for currying the favor of its base. To say that this is what fascism is at a fundamental level is to mistake its superstructure for its base. But how is Fascism structured? How does society reproduce itself? Is there a fascist mode of production? No. The state mobilizes its population so as to target scapegoat(s) while simultaneously expanding in order to secure the spoils of war. Without scapegoats, there is no Fascism. And a state requires social cohesion to mobilize its base. Thus without cohesion there is no Fascism. At minimum, social cohesion requires the ability to sustain and motivate a critical mass of the population. Thus Fascism requires the continued maintenance of the capitalist mode of production in order to persist, but it simultaneously undermines capitalism due to A. the continued need for war machines and B. the need to punish a scapegoat, which both siphon value from the rest of the economy, thus dooming the entire enterprise. This is why fascism burns out and leads to doom for all parties involved wherever it has been tried. Any definition of fascism that ignores this is historically inaccurate and practically useless.

Re: The state of open source AI

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lowering the cost of hardware still won't solve the issue. HBM and DDR5 was never cheap, even before the shortages, so selling a full inference system is beyond the acceptable price range for most casual customers. We're going to see Apple and Google compete over services and AI/OS integration instead, it will probably be years before your OEM takes local models seriously.

Apple and Google (via smartphones) are in literally everyone's pocket. Running KIMI on a phone is not possible today and I agree with you that it will "probably be years before..." it is. But how many years do you guess? I personally do not think it will take even 10 years for the situation to be commonplace.

> I personally do not think it will take even 10 years for the situation to be commonplace.

Do you personally remember how far smartphones progressed in the past 10 years? It's not as long a time as you think it is, the limits of what a smartphone GPU is capable of did not substantially change in that time. Nor did the amount of onboard RAM that we include in the package. This is true even for Nvidia's ARM SOCs, frankly.

Apple, Microsoft and Google all eventually want to enforce OS-level lock-in for the most profitable AI services (eg. their own). It's much more attainable and profitable to use that lock-in to sell you exclusive service integration, the local AI revolution probably won't begin on their hardware.

Re: The state of open source AI

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The outcome is plausible. Open weights models though look like a tactical more than a principled play by Chinese companies to overcome the disadvantage and difficulties to access western markets. Two issues: 1. If market conditions change they might decide to close down like Meta did. 2. If as you said models keep getting more expensive to train, is an open weights strategy financially sustainable? edit: typo

That's probably pretty likely, but if we're honest, are LLMs built and funded by a hostile Chinese authoritarian regime any more dangerous or harmful than LLMs built and funded by a hostile American authoritarian regime? China absolutely does not have my best interests at heart, but America's technofascism is probably more immediately dangerous and harmful. Americans genuinely have more to fear from America than Chin…

One big difference is that the US doesn't have much public record of using state espionage resources to steal industrial secrets to give domestic industry a leg up in the market, whereas CCP very much does.

And while I use and love the open weight models, it seems likely to be pretty hard to prove conclusively that they have no reinforcement-learning-trained proclivity towards curling specific URLs if the topic happens to be some very specific thing that the government is interested in, when used to drive agents.

So it depends who you are. If you're a company, you might have something to fear. If you're a private citizen, maybe not so much.

Re: The state of open source AI

#237
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably pretty likely, but if we're honest, are LLMs built and funded by a hostile Chinese authoritarian regime any more dangerous or harmful than LLMs built and funded by a hostile American authoritarian regime? China absolutely does not have my best interests at heart, but America's technofascism is probably more immediately dangerous and harmful. Americans genuinely have more to fear from America than Chin…

One big difference is that the US doesn't have much public record of using state espionage resources to steal industrial secrets to give domestic industry a leg up in the market, whereas CCP very much does. And while I use and love the open weight models, it seems likely to be pretty hard to prove conclusively that they have no reinforcement-learning-trained proclivity towards curling specific URLs if the topic happe…

I don’t think US companies could ever fully trust models sponsored by foreign adversaries. How would you ever verify they are safe?

Provenance of training set is going to be critical. It’s largely ignored now, but the first time a malicious exfiltration occurs it will go off as if a bomb was detonated.

Re: The state of open source AI

#238

Speculation: open models is what will kill Anthropic and OpenAI. Hyperscalers can run the models without a licensing fee. Apple can make them smaller and put them on the device. The frontier models are an edge and a liability. They're astronomically expensive to train. Without them, their models will fade into obscurity. Their marketing depends on people believing the models are meaningfully different, as people have…

> open models is what will kill Anthropic and OpenAI.

Maybe killing Anthropic is a good thing? Anthropic believe that they are the moral god and they get to determine what we can do and can't do, and they get to tell us what model to use and what not to use. I find it very counterproductive.

Re: The state of open source AI

#239
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a bit skeptical of the token cost/ROI for all models, but sunk costs are sunk. It has the feel of self-improving super-intelligence or bust to me. If you get that, the frontier model(s) run away with a faster exponential. It's a bit like semi with Moore's Law with silicon, GaAs could never catch up. If you don't get it, the fast followers crush the high investment and there's no moat. Not like they can enforce co…

There's a world where frontier models run away with a faster exponential and still go bust due to being outcompeted on efficiency. There's a point past which "intelligence" stops mattering as much, and IMO we're already there. Consider which would be more useful (and profitable for its creator): a model that is 3x/5x/10x as "intelligent" as Mythos, for whatever your favorite yardstick of intelligence is? Or a model t…

If the former can develop the latter, then the former.

Re: The state of open source AI

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who says it hasn't already? I've driven in a LOT of the USA. Sure Chicago, NYC, DC, LA, LV... They're all built up and feel modern. Try driving anywhere in the Midwest outside of the big cities. Dilapidated carcas buildings everywhere. Urban and rural blight. Only jobs are low paying service work. Its bleak. Like, really bad poverty as a disease bleak. And its crazy watching it too. They're ignorant (involuntatily),…

At risk of greatly oversimplifying American politics, it's truly impressive how good Democrats are at shooting themselves in the foot. That's why I personally believe Sanders and Mamdani have found so much success with the working class; they keep themselves separate from the Culture War slugfest that mainline Democrats either voluntarily engage in or let Republicans drag them into. IMO the vast majority of those "cu…

It’s very difficult to be for the people and also get hundreds of millions of dollars from wealthy donors. That is the democratic party’s plight.
Post reply on HN