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Z.ai confirms Ox Alpha is a new GLM-series model and will release its weights

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Re: Z.ai confirms Ox Alpha is a new GLM-series model and will release its weights

#61
post #27

Funny how all china companies are expected to release weights by default

All smaller models and models behind frontier are expected to be released by default. Otherwise there’s no reason to produce them.

Chinese labs are not releasing all of their model weights. Qwen is known as an open weight model by most, but their top model is not open weight.

Releasing weights is a marketing strategy for newer labs to get their brand out there.

Re: Z.ai confirms Ox Alpha is a new GLM-series model and will release its weights

#62

it's for sure better than deepseek flash 07/31

That is saying a lot if Ox Alpha is also small and relatively cheap computationally. I hope so; I love deepseek-v4-flash-0731 and use it frequently. Fast inference is good and fits with my dev style: I like to be in the loop, not let an agent code on its own for long periods of time.

Re: Z.ai confirms Ox Alpha is a new GLM-series model and will release its weights

#64

I had Ox Alpha working on coding tasks for a couple days non-stop, via OpenRouter and OpenCode Zen. Crush harness. It was able to complete tasks at a level that I'd put between Sonnet and Opus. It makes few mistakes, but is not that smart. The main issue for me, is that it degraded into a doom loop several times. One of them was running the same bash command about a thousand times. The last model I've used that had t…

I usually see doom loops when working with quants. Likely theyre trying to maximize the viability of a efficient model quant that can bw upgraded. Like cutting coke to get crack, quantiry over quality.

Re: Z.ai confirms Ox Alpha is a new GLM-series model and will release its weights

#65
post #37

There's a lot of brand confusion among the Chinese models right now. Kimi, Qwen, GLM, Z.ai, Ox. We might know the difference (or I should say, someone does because I'm losing track already) but these models have no chance at end user penetration and loyalty until there's a single focused survivor. It took me a year talking about it until my wife knew that ChatGPT and Gemini are two different things. PS: some replies,…

There's a lot of brand confusion among the American models right now. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemma, OpenAI, Meta, Google, Muse Spark, Anthropic, Microsoft, Gemini. We might know the difference (or I should say, someone does because I'm losing track already) but these models have no chance at end user penetration and loyalty until there's a single focused survivor.

It took me a year talking about it until my wife knew that Kimi K3 and GLM 5.3 are two different things.

Re: Z.ai confirms Ox Alpha is a new GLM-series model and will release its weights

#66
post #37

There's a lot of brand confusion among the Chinese models right now. Kimi, Qwen, GLM, Z.ai, Ox. We might know the difference (or I should say, someone does because I'm losing track already) but these models have no chance at end user penetration and loyalty until there's a single focused survivor. It took me a year talking about it until my wife knew that ChatGPT and Gemini are two different things. PS: some replies,…

The bubbling froth at the open edge is getting user adopted at a crazy pace, by the early adopter persona trying them all within hours to days. This persona loves taking apart and putting together novel things, and telling others.

Fast follower persona clusters around emerging zeitgeist across the tellings. At the moment, arguably that's mostly Qwen for everyday hobbyists, and GLM for those that can run 512GB to 1.5TB of memory. This persona is seeking viable applied results: "I have frontier at home".

The early majority pick things up after models are curated into apps like LM Studio or one's platform app of choice, usually at least one major release behind because it takes that long to choose and package into mass distribution.

This is the step where early majority persona "has no idea" what the parade of weird names is about, they care about qualia of the conversations they try to have.

This persona is, at present, very under-served, and likely to remain so until mass devices can perform feeling like 27B at Q4 large quality better, or workplace devices can achieve a pragmatic utility like 135B at Q8 or better.

Harnesses that work where the workplace persona lives bridge this. This persona doesn't care the Chinese model name, they care "does it code?" For that, the applied harness and model take time to be matched, as JetBrains did harnessing a tailored Qwen 3.6 in the IDE. More efforts like https://www.jetbrains.com/junie/ are needed for the majority persona to perceive value from changing their workflow again.

HN's "job" is better outcomes with less friction at each persona.

Re: Z.ai confirms Ox Alpha is a new GLM-series model and will release its weights

#67
post #37

There's a lot of brand confusion among the Chinese models right now. Kimi, Qwen, GLM, Z.ai, Ox. We might know the difference (or I should say, someone does because I'm losing track already) but these models have no chance at end user penetration and loyalty until there's a single focused survivor. It took me a year talking about it until my wife knew that ChatGPT and Gemini are two different things. PS: some replies,…

> these models have no chance at end user penetration and loyalty until there's a single focused survivor.

This reminds me a lot of media horse-race reporting, saying that "candidate X has no chance unless they" and "candidate Y has a strong showing in", and it's very thinly cover for the publication liking Y and disliking X, avoiding talking about actual policy, and trying as much as they can to make their predictions self-fulfilling.

Re: Z.ai confirms Ox Alpha is a new GLM-series model and will release its weights

#68
post #37

There's a lot of brand confusion among the Chinese models right now. Kimi, Qwen, GLM, Z.ai, Ox. We might know the difference (or I should say, someone does because I'm losing track already) but these models have no chance at end user penetration and loyalty until there's a single focused survivor. It took me a year talking about it until my wife knew that ChatGPT and Gemini are two different things. PS: some replies,…

> have no chance at end user penetration and loyalty until there's a single focused survivor.

But why does that matter? End users (I believe, feel free to correct) do not really contribute all that much revenue-wise. They're certainly not the SOTA target audience.

The professional market doesn't need a household name. They need the most sensible tool for the job, and the CN models right now tick many boxes when it comes to that.

Re: Z.ai confirms Ox Alpha is a new GLM-series model and will release its weights

#69

Rather than a pelican, for fun I showed it a couple of screenshots from Niu Lai and asked it to create an SVG inspired by the images. I explained a little about how the movie had been made by a mother & son team, initially derided but then went on to surprise cult box office success. It came up with this: https://x.com/syneryder/status/2091978367579156569/photo/1 Created in a single turn - but technically not a "one-…

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Re: Z.ai confirms Ox Alpha is a new GLM-series model and will release its weights

#70

Rather than a pelican, for fun I showed it a couple of screenshots from Niu Lai and asked it to create an SVG inspired by the images. I explained a little about how the movie had been made by a mother & son team, initially derided but then went on to surprise cult box office success. It came up with this: https://x.com/syneryder/status/2091978367579156569/photo/1 Created in a single turn - but technically not a "one-…

> …and it's fun. I'm enjoying working with Ox in a way that I'm just not enjoying talking to the 5.0 Anthropic models

hard agree. it does not really feel "smart", but the personality is super refreshing

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