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The gap between open weights LLMs and closed source LLMs

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Re: The gap between open weights LLMs and closed source LLMs

#121

Post by Zetaphor »

echoangle wrote: post #82
anticorporate wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also, importantly, a distinction between what are told we can no longer use, and what can actually be taken away. Open source and open hardware can be called illegal by a government, but, if we collectively invest our energy into open alternatives, they can't be taken away in the same sense. I can build a RepRap printer and I can use a local AI model. It's on all of us to make sure that the open alternatives…

Believe me, if the government wants to stop you from having access to something like that, they could do it. Just give people some incentive to report you and make really harsh punishments and everyone will be thinking really hard about how bad they want have access.

Because that has worked so well for:

* Drugs

* Media piracy

* Alcohol

* Sex work

* Unlicensed gambling

The government is not an all powerful entity with absolute control over its people. Even in countries under past and present dictatorship there are examples of people getting access to what the government deemed as illegal.

Re: The gap between open weights LLMs and closed source LLMs

#122

Post by gwerbin »

profsummergig wrote: post #5

IMHO, the biggest problem with the future of open weights models is that currently, open weights models are the result of philanthropy by some private org. (e.g. DeepSeek). The spigot can be turned off at any time. Until there's some sort of "community owned hardware", open weights models are always at risk of being discontinued.

Isn't this also true of a lot of FOSS software and libraries? tensorflow and pytorch for example, among many others.

Re: The gap between open weights LLMs and closed source LLMs

#123

Post by gwerbin »

Schiendelman wrote: post #42
amunozo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are we assuming only American labs can innovate? DeepSeek already innovated a lot in efficiency, for example.

It's really unclear how much innovation DeepSeek has actually done, vs training on frontier model conversations.

That's innovative

Re: The gap between open weights LLMs and closed source LLMs

#124

Post by citadel_melon »

vitally3643 wrote: post #40
felooboolooomba wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they can never be taken away Your right to 3d print whatever you want is about to be taken away (in California). What software you can run on your computer can already be restricted. Absolutely everything can be taken away. The simplest way to remove open models is probably to declare them a tool that terrorists could use. Crazy? Yes, the world is totally crazy these days.

Just like declaring piracy illegal stopped piracy and removed pirated materials from everyone's computers. Everything cannot, in fact, be taken away. Don't propagandize yourself. Some things, like information, are free. Not even China can prevent all its citizens from accessing Western internet. USGov simply does not have the resources to find and audit every hard drive and USB stick in the country for illegal files.…

Maybe we can each get assigned an AI government goon to look over our shoulders 24/7. Maybe each neuron in my brain will have their own subagent goon. Each mitochondria gets their own subagent government goon. The government will perfectly model my every move. They will perfectly model the smell of my asparagus piss aroma.

Re: The gap between open weights LLMs and closed source LLMs

#125

Post by 40four »

profsummergig wrote: post #5

IMHO, the biggest problem with the future of open weights models is that currently, open weights models are the result of philanthropy by some private org. (e.g. DeepSeek). The spigot can be turned off at any time. Until there's some sort of "community owned hardware", open weights models are always at risk of being discontinued.

We should address the elephant in the room. The problem with the future of open weight models is not they are created as a result of philanthropy by some private org. All of the top contenders are created by the Chinese government.

I don’t think we should describe these companies as simply releasing these highly capable open weight models out of the goodness of their hearts

Re: The gap between open weights LLMs and closed source LLMs

#126

Post by anon373839 »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #32
NitpickLawyer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but the biggest plus for open models is that they can never be taken away. In other words, whatever capabilities they reach (even if there will never be another model), those stay forever. That can't be said for API-based models where a provider can sunset models whenever they feel like (i.e. gpt5-mini will soon be gone, and replaced by a more expensive 5.4-mini, same for goog, etc). And there will always be in…

> Nvda for one has every incentive to keep the nemotron line going They're releases so far have been kind of lackluster compared to Qwen and other Chinese models. My suspicion is that Nvidia won't be releasing models that appear to compete with frontier models because that would upset their big customers.

Nvidia's future incentives are not clear to me. Their big customers are actively working to develop custom silicon, see e.g. "Open"AI's Broadcom announcement. The more independence their whale customers attain, the more attractive cutting them off at the knees and selling sovereign AI inference hardware directly to businesses and consumers becomes.

This is pure speculation, but I have a hunch that the Nemotron line is intended as a shot across the bow, and that's why its capabilities have been strong but not quite open-frontier level.

Re: The gap between open weights LLMs and closed source LLMs

#127

Post by psychoslave »

NamlchakKhandro wrote: post #113
vitally3643 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like declaring piracy illegal stopped piracy and removed pirated materials from everyone's computers. Everything cannot, in fact, be taken away. Don't propagandize yourself. Some things, like information, are free. Not even China can prevent all its citizens from accessing Western internet. USGov simply does not have the resources to find and audit every hard drive and USB stick in the country for illegal files.…

You wouldn't download a car?

In Soviet Russia, one couldn't download a car. In modern America, cars upload you.

Re: The gap between open weights LLMs and closed source LLMs

#128

Post by anon373839 »

jfim wrote: post #31
NitpickLawyer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but the biggest plus for open models is that they can never be taken away. In other words, whatever capabilities they reach (even if there will never be another model), those stay forever. That can't be said for API-based models where a provider can sunset models whenever they feel like (i.e. gpt5-mini will soon be gone, and replaced by a more expensive 5.4-mini, same for goog, etc). And there will always be in…

True, but the capabilities and knowledge of that model are also frozen in time, so the value of that model declines over time. A model that writes code without knowledge of any language or library changes for half a decade is less useful. A 2021 era chatgpt would be quite quaint in 2026. Right now the Chinese labs might have incentives to release their models for free, and maybe Google is happy to release open weight…

> capabilities and knowledge of that model are also frozen in time

I think this matters less than you think. If the spigot turns off, open LLM research is going to have a powerful incentive to focus on post-training to refresh stale base models. And post-training, in general, is so much cheaper and faster than pre-training anyway. I was pretty surprised to learn that GLM-5.2's entire RL training (the part that makes it reliable at agentic tasks) was completed in just TWO DAYS.

Re: The gap between open weights LLMs and closed source LLMs

#129

Post by 40four »

christina97 wrote: post #35

The Chinese models will not overtake the frontier US ones given the current way things are going. The US models derive their lead from incredible efforts to source more and higher quality (mostly synthetic data) via great feats (eg generating with humongous teacher models that could never feasibly serve interactive traffic). The Chinese models advance via heroic efforts to optimize models and great feats to secure mo…

I don’t think anyone seriously believes any of the Chinese models are ever going to “overtake” the American frontier models. I doubt that that’s even their goal.

But if they can stay on pace, within say 6 to 12 months of the bleeding edge of the American frontier models, that’s a huge problem.

If they can just piggyback on the Herculean efforts of Anthropic, OpenAI, Google etc., accept a little bit of lag, and save billions of dollars? Why wouldn’t they?

And for the end user, why would they pay a premium subscription price for something they can just wait six months for and run on their own hardware at home? In my opinion, this is the cat and mouse game that’s being played right now. And I suspect it’s intentional on the side of the open weight models. I would bet they are playing a war of attrition

Re: The gap between open weights LLMs and closed source LLMs

#130

Post by psychoslave »

40four wrote: post #125
profsummergig wrote: post #5

IMHO, the biggest problem with the future of open weights models is that currently, open weights models are the result of philanthropy by some private org. (e.g. DeepSeek). The spigot can be turned off at any time. Until there's some sort of "community owned hardware", open weights models are always at risk of being discontinued.

We should address the elephant in the room. The problem with the future of open weight models is not they are created as a result of philanthropy by some private org . All of the top contenders are created by the Chinese government . I don’t think we should describe these companies as simply releasing these highly capable open weight models out of the goodness of their hearts

Bhutan didn't release any model yet as far as I know, if the level of care government give to people actual happiness is what are supposed to be concerned about here.

Among over countries that are consistent being on top on gross national happiness are Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. Among them the current abilities to release open models is observable.

USA unfortunately continues to fall down quickly in World Happiness Report rank, and that's not because many other countries made great progresses.

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