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Corporate America is getting hooked on open-source AI

nytimes.com

91–100 of 300 posts

Re: Corporate America is getting hooked on open-source AI

#91

I think using open-source AI is no longer about API cost but about company survival. Take Anthropic for an example. Anthropic has successfully destroyed customer trust, at least for me. DHH in a recent interview mentioned that Claude refused to translate an article about immigration. Not summarize. Not editorialize. Translate! I think this reveals an unacceptable level of paternalism: Anthropic fundamentally believes…

Ah, yes, I'm sure the article that moral paragon DHH wished to translate was not at all harmful, and that this was a good-faith effort on his part /s

While I agree that Claude can be overly paternalistic at times, how should it respond to a request to translate, say, bomb-making instructions? It's reasonable to me that it might refuse this.

Re: Corporate America is getting hooked on open-source AI

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I check in on this I hear a more recent model is the one where they started doing good work. I'm excited to here that Astra is where it got capable enough to work on code next year

I think it truly just was Opus 4.5 where LLMs became usable for coding.

4.5 became useful for one shotting large features.

LLMs were useful for coding ever since GPT3 (copilot), and sonnet 3.5 for agentic coding.

Re: Corporate America is getting hooked on open-source AI

#93
post #78
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But most commodities are the same way. It’s super expensive to drill for oil. I need oil and I’m in no position to mine my own because of the massive capital investment. But it doesn’t stop it from being a pure commodity. I couldn’t care less which company drilled for the oil… it’s all the same to me. Models are increasingly no different. OpenAI and Anthropic are a gas station saying “buy our gas for 10x the price!”…

The key difference is that the models upgrade multiple times a year. It is an inherently different than a commodity market

Even commodity markets recognize different grades of product. The oil market separately prices different grades of oil, different refined products. All that really matters is that when you go to the market to buy, you can say, "I need X amount of this grade of this product" and that is what you will get. If AI models can be sold that way, you basically have a commodity market.

Re: Corporate America is getting hooked on open-source AI

#94
post #26

Every larger company I talk to these days has an active project on moving away from OpenAI and Anthropic to open models. And they’re actively shifting, as the article says, so the threat is far from theoretical. Unless they both dramatically slash prices then they’re in big trouble. Neither of them can afford to do that and both desperately need to convince the street that the opposite will happen if they want any ho…

I know what happens in many big companies and not a single one is moving away from Anthropic/OpenAI/SpaceXAI. > Unless they both dramatically slash prices then they’re in big trouble False, they have already done so many times. > Neither of them can afford to do that and both desperately need to convince the street that the opposite will happen if they want any hope at a successful IPO. False, margins are higher and…

Not sure who you’re talking to but the NYTimes reporting clearly refutes your statements that nobody is doing it with clear facts. It’s been a tidal shift in attitudes over these last few months and the messaging back to OpenAI and Anthropic has been clear. Slash your prices by an order of magnitude or you’re done for most use cases.

We’re heading into corporate budget season for 2027 when all this is coming under a huge microscope in boardroom after boardroom across the country at a terrible time for companies trying to IPO.

Re: Corporate America is getting hooked on open-source AI

#95
post #4
post #3

I'd love to! For real coding though, SOTA models barely get the job done. It wasn't until Opus 4.5 that you could really get decent results. I'm sure this will change (and I can't wait for it!) but as of today, open models might be fine for summarizing and writing docs, but you need SOTA to work on code if you want to be competitive.

I do think there are now open weight models that are on par with (or beating) Opus 4.5 by now (e.g. Kimi K3, GLM5.3). But yeah obviously the frontier closed source models seem to have pulled away once again, so open weight seems to be a few months behind right now (which might be too long to wait for a lot of people!).

Those two you mentioned completely demolish opus 4.5. It's not even close. I'd say they are between opus 4.8 and opus 5. And better in some tasks.

Re: Corporate America is getting hooked on open-source AI

#97
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are most definitely is a moat - but it works both ways. The railguards in the models create moats keeping customers out. And the cost to build a modern agentic model is in the 10 figure range and growing. This is an expensive arms race that is going to create moats.

OK but even if F1 teams are a very expensive arms race it doesn't prevent me to bike to shop cheaply. You eed to have a moat around what people need .

That's true for sure in most business endeavors. The goal is to fill the area under the demand curve and there are demands for F1 race cars and for scooters. The analogy breaks down somewhat with software in general and for sure with superintelligence. A superintelligence can provide those "low-level" (ie scooter) services perhaps just as effectively because it's super intelligent and knows how to do things efficiently - for example by spawning agents of different intelligence levels. It can thus fill the area under the demand curve. This is what the big AI firms are shooting for.

Re: Corporate America is getting hooked on open-source AI

#98
post #3

I'd love to! For real coding though, SOTA models barely get the job done. It wasn't until Opus 4.5 that you could really get decent results. I'm sure this will change (and I can't wait for it!) but as of today, open models might be fine for summarizing and writing docs, but you need SOTA to work on code if you want to be competitive.

You're not corporate America (and trust me, I mostly mean that as a plus). I also work in software, and while I vaguely disagree that open models can't be used (they absolutely fit into productive niches here, and holy hell are the last generation [ex laguna s1, kimi k3, glm 5.3, etc] actually decent) - I will agree that SOTA are a better fit for software development, especially when used in conjunction with an alrea…

Good luck to the poor shleps trying to make a living performing "white collar tasks" I guess, right? They can all go be poets or painters...

Re: Corporate America is getting hooked on open-source AI

#99
> AT&T turned to artificial intelligence models from Anthropic and OpenAI in recent years to help with customer service, call transcription and coding. [...]

> By May, open models accounted for 20 percent of AT&T’s A.I. use. That has since risen to 40 percent and may jump to 60 percent in the coming months, Mr. Markus said in an interview.

This is missing a crucial detail. We know they "help with customer service, call transcription and coding", but which of those have been upgrade to open models?

Call transcription is trivial to do with open models. I can run Whisper or Parakeet on a low-spec laptop.

"Customer service" could mean a lot of things, but it sounds feasible for open models too.

"Coding" - they might go to open models for that, but I expect the costs involved in paying for closed models for software developers within AT&T are a fraction of the costs involved in transcribing all of their calls or handling aspects of custom service for millions of customers.

From later in the story:

> AT&T researches Chinese models but is not using them, Mr. Markus said. Instead, it is working with popular alternatives made by American companies such as the Gemma A.I. model from Google and the Llama A.I. models from Meta.

Gemma 4 is great, but really, Llama, in 2026?

Re: Corporate America is getting hooked on open-source AI

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they're all converging on capability. Do I care if it's a 72% or 74% on SWEBench? Practically, probably not. And if I'm not paying per token locally, then if it takes a tiny bit longer to get to the result, I don't care.

Smartphones and laptops are also "converging", but Apple is always a year or two ahead so it doesn't matter. "Converging" is a meaningless term when things move quickly and cost billions to develop.

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