Open-weight AI is having its Kubernetes moment • Hacker News Board

Re: Open-weight AI is having its Kubernetes moment

#111

Post by Aurornis » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 7:03 PM UTC

imachine1980_ wrote: post #86

Aurornis wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not very clear why using GPT-4 in early 2023 was so expensive and then six months later 20 bucks could get you a fair amount of GPT-4 inference. The price is what the market is willing to bear for the available compute capacity and competitive landscape. You can only discover that price after trying different price points and seeing what happens. Everyone is trying different pricing schemes and discounts as th…

Most unmature markets aren't subsidized to the point that LLM market is, most market have some level of baseline profitablity, this market doesn't, that's because most market subsidized the marketing or the capex but this market doesn't hold the opex, the capex not the amount of marketing let alone all of this together

Most new markets are funded by initial investment capital. Early entrants operate at a loss as they grow.

This isn’t as unusual as some people are trying to make it sound. This has been happening since the dawn of finance.

I thought this would be less foreign to everyone since we just went through this whole conversation for a decade with Uber and Lyft. Their demise was predicted from the start from everyone who thought that it was going to collapse as soon as they couldn’t subsidize your rides with promos. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth as their prices changed to feel out the market. Then they found profitability and the critics went silent.

Re: Open-weight AI is having its Kubernetes moment

#112

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 7:07 PM UTC

spwa4 wrote: post #17

firasd wrote: post #2

One of the strangest things in the AI industry is 'tokenomics'. It's not very clear why using GPT-4 in early 2023 was so expensive and then six months later 20 bucks could get you a fair amount of GPT-4 inference. This pattern has continued across various labs/providers for years--there is a continuous see-saw of pricing that doesn't seem related to anything. So what open weight models do is at least provide a baseli…

Because as per usual it's silicon valley misunderstanding economics. AI is HPC. And how the HPC market worked before: If you're the best performing "computing cluster" (ie. whatever you call the entity that can complete a massive calculation), you get a blank check from Congress. Why? Because you need those calculations to "pump" nuclear weapons. They are needed to calculate both the geometry to make fusion bombs pos…

[deleted]

Re: Open-weight AI is having its Kubernetes moment

#113

Post by Sammi » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 7:09 PM UTC

Kubernetes is a system/infrastructure orchestration tool. I completely fail to see how it is comparable to open weight neural nets. In either application or function.

I'm sorry to do that hn comment thing where we all just race to contradict or talk in opposition of whatever was said before. I'm aware. But really guys, was this article really not just a miss?

Re: Open-weight AI is having its Kubernetes moment

#114

Post by esseph » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 7:09 PM UTC

vikramkr wrote: post #39

firasd wrote: post #2

One of the strangest things in the AI industry is 'tokenomics'. It's not very clear why using GPT-4 in early 2023 was so expensive and then six months later 20 bucks could get you a fair amount of GPT-4 inference. This pattern has continued across various labs/providers for years--there is a continuous see-saw of pricing that doesn't seem related to anything. So what open weight models do is at least provide a baseli…

Did they actually ever cut the price on gpt 4? The oldest versions of it in the api still seem stupidly expensive? There were definitely price cuts as they introduced the turbo models and stuff, and new versions of each model might have gotten pricey cuts, but just because they're both called "gpt-4 something" doesn't mean they're the same under the hood or that they didn't change a bunch of stuff under the hood to m…

> because they're both called "gpt-4 something

More like a generation of models with different specific use cases

Re: Open-weight AI is having its Kubernetes moment

#115

Post by jrm4 » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 7:10 PM UTC

firasd wrote: post #2

One of the strangest things in the AI industry is 'tokenomics'. It's not very clear why using GPT-4 in early 2023 was so expensive and then six months later 20 bucks could get you a fair amount of GPT-4 inference. This pattern has continued across various labs/providers for years--there is a continuous see-saw of pricing that doesn't seem related to anything. So what open weight models do is at least provide a baseli…

It's only strange if you do the silly thing of presuming a "fair market" in which e.g. it's generally easy to get reliable information about how all of the things work.

There's just obvious and enormous incentive for the OpenAI's of the world, along with all of the other players, to confuse, misrepresent or just straight up lie a whole bunch about everything given how new and unknown the tech is.

Re: Open-weight AI is having its Kubernetes moment

#116

Post by esseph » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 7:15 PM UTC

amazingamazing wrote: post #44

Sadly until china scales production of hardware it really isn’t economical to run this stuff yourself. It is good it exists though to put pressure against the labs. Honestly imo this is just proof apple will win in the end. Eventually a phone will be able to run a model good enough to do most things and it then is game over.

> Sadly until china scales production of hardware it really isn’t economical to run this stuff yourself.

I'm running this stuff at home on my desktop and using it through an app on my phone. 60-140TPS depending on model / use case.

It's more than fast enough to even maintain voice conversation.

Re: Open-weight AI is having its Kubernetes moment

#117

Post by Kbelicius » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 7:15 PM UTC

Sammi wrote: post #113

Kubernetes is a system/infrastructure orchestration tool. I completely fail to see how it is comparable to open weight neural nets. In either application or function. I'm sorry to do that hn comment thing where we all just race to contradict or talk in opposition of whatever was said before. I'm aware. But really guys, was this article really not just a miss?

It is natural to not see something that isn't there. The article isn' comapraing the two in application or functio

Re: Open-weight AI is having its Kubernetes moment

#118

Post by mystifyingpoi » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 7:16 PM UTC

jdub wrote: post #83

yard2010 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in the same boat as you until I needed to learn how to use it in my $dayjob. It was like discovering a new continent. I couldn't care less about it before, but the moment I realized it's a kind of cloud OS I was astounded by how this thing is genius. It's the kind of thing that gives you dopamine rushes when you use it. Something about how there is a solution to every problem you didn't know even mattered turns…

This is the initial endorphin rush you get when wielding a complex system. The feeling changes when the complexity explodes in your face.

Well said. The rush is when one understands the loosely coupled control loops and how they work together... until something fails in the middle with no error.

Re: Open-weight AI is having its Kubernetes moment

#119

Post by esseph » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 7:18 PM UTC

amazingamazing wrote: post #44

Sadly until china scales production of hardware it really isn’t economical to run this stuff yourself. It is good it exists though to put pressure against the labs. Honestly imo this is just proof apple will win in the end. Eventually a phone will be able to run a model good enough to do most things and it then is game over.

> Honestly imo this is just proof apple will win in the end. Eventually a phone will be able to run a model good enough to do most things and it then is game over.

I don't see how these are related.

The accuracy and capabilities of your model are directly related to its size. You need a lot of memory for that.

It will be decades before we get enough useful memory in a phone form factor at a price point people can afford it before something like a frontier model now is useful on the phone.

Now, you can run some models on your phone today.

Either way, Apple is using Google today. That could change, but Google isn't exactly getting out of the TPU business and they've been doing it a long time.

Also, some of you live in a very weird Apple bubble. Apple is not so relevant outside the US.

Re: Open-weight AI is having its Kubernetes moment

#120

Post by esseph » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 7:19 PM UTC

root-parent wrote: post #55

amazingamazing wrote: post #44

Sadly until china scales production of hardware it really isn’t economical to run this stuff yourself. It is good it exists though to put pressure against the labs. Honestly imo this is just proof apple will win in the end. Eventually a phone will be able to run a model good enough to do most things and it then is game over.

>> do most things and it then is game over. For the Hyperscalers...and Oracle...cant wait for the day...

And it floods the market with millions looking for work