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The unbearable cheapness of open weight models

jamesoclaire.com

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Re: The unbearable cheapness of open weight models

#51

Post by orwin »

Jackobrien wrote: post #7

The giants knew this was coming, and soon 95% of AI tasks will be able to be done by open models (coding, research, cowork style work). So why pay a premium? Why use them at all? This leaves the labs with two options: 1) push the frontier in a way only massive scale can, and cash in on it (mythos level cyber security, recursive training, frontier science work). There’s big money for never before possible capabilities…

Mythos was outperformed by small, specific local models in multiple oss project.

Re: The unbearable cheapness of open weight models

#52

Post by watwut »

spwa4 wrote: post #24
NitpickLawyer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is getting fired for using SotA.

If the price difference is 2x? Sure. If the price difference is 50x? No way.

Accenture says "yeah totally CEOs will pay a lot for literal nothing"

Re: The unbearable cheapness of open weight models

#53

Post by hobo_mark »

dubbie99 wrote: post #44
ForHackernews wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google already owns the app layer, and hardware, and they are a frontier-level AI research firm. I don't see how Anthropic or OpenAI survives being eaten by DeepSeek et al from the bottom of the stack and Google from the top.

The only reason people use google apps is because they are cheap and reliable. The user experience is awful. Have you ever tried to find a document you had open yesterday in drive?

Uh? Recently and frequently opened documents always show up on the first screen as soon as I open the app or website.

Re: The unbearable cheapness of open weight models

#54

Post by pjc50 »

arikrahman wrote: post #6

With cache hit rates being effectively free, harnesses like Reasonix have let me do a month of work for less than 2 dollars. It's not even the subsidies making it cheap, American providers like Digital Ocean or Cloudflare host the same model with similar pricing.

How does caching help here? How much repetition is there in queries?

Re: The unbearable cheapness of open weight models

#55

Post by RugnirViking »

orwin wrote: post #51
Jackobrien wrote: post #7

The giants knew this was coming, and soon 95% of AI tasks will be able to be done by open models (coding, research, cowork style work). So why pay a premium? Why use them at all? This leaves the labs with two options: 1) push the frontier in a way only massive scale can, and cash in on it (mythos level cyber security, recursive training, frontier science work). There’s big money for never before possible capabilities…

Mythos was outperformed by small, specific local models in multiple oss project.

i'd love to hear about this! do you have examples?

Re: The unbearable cheapness of open weight models

#56

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Jackobrien wrote: post #7

The giants knew this was coming, and soon 95% of AI tasks will be able to be done by open models (coding, research, cowork style work). So why pay a premium? Why use them at all? This leaves the labs with two options: 1) push the frontier in a way only massive scale can, and cash in on it (mythos level cyber security, recursive training, frontier science work). There’s big money for never before possible capabilities…

> Be apple where everyone else is Linux.

Apple and Linux barely even compete in the same markets. Linux runs on the servers and embedded devices, Apple on the smartphones. Android is technically Linux but not in the "is a good analogy for open weight models" sense because Android is so deeply under the thumb of Google. The main place Linux and Apple actually compete is for PCs and laptops, and that's the market where the thing with 65% market share is Microsoft.

Re: The unbearable cheapness of open weight models

#57

Post by dogwalker5000 »

odie5533 wrote: post #12
Jimega36 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reach AGI to leapfrog whoever is behind. Burn everything to get there faster.

If Anthropic announced AGI tomorrow, how much better would that model be than Fable 5? It's looking like the road to AGI is gradual and moat-less. Models seem capable of improving other models, and even without illegal distillations many are nipping at the heels of Anthropic.

If AGI = Data from Star Trek, it would be a huge leap. Frankly, anything less I wouldn’t consider as AGI.

Re: The unbearable cheapness of open weight models

#58

Post by AnthonyMouse »

arthurofbabylon wrote: post #10

Let's imagine that Anthropic/OpenAI fail to manufacture scarcity by villainizing Open Weight models (a sincere probability). What is left for these corporations to prop up their prices, or any margin at all? I expect scaffolding around tool use, supporting bespoke implementation and driving risk down for institutional adoption. (They might even build an insurance tool to protect accountants/lawyers from errors in com…

> It seems plainly clear to me that information and information processing is commodifying (for the first time in human history?). Without the age-old bottlenecks at the top of the value chain, capital will surely flow downwards, right?

Isn't this the thing people have said about every new technology since the printing press? And it has been mostly true, but it has also been the case that the incumbents have fought hard to lock things back up again. Newspapers and radio stations buy each other up, the open web gets locked inside Facebook (which, 30 years ago, people were already worried about with AOL), people have computers in their pockets they can't run their own programs on anymore.

Interests are going to want to lock the new information thing behind a gate so they can charge a toll and censor what they don't like, same as it ever was. You don't win by default, you have to fight to stop them.

Re: The unbearable cheapness of open weight models

#59

Post by dogwalker5000 »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #40
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think people's argument is that it's impossible to put data centers into space. The argument is that the downsides (radiation, cooling, maintenance, power) are so severe that it is pointless to do it at scale.

Go back to the megathreads when this came up. Even here on HN. Plenty of people used the argument that it can't be done, for various reasons. And my point was that at one point or the other there were many "downsides" for all the tech that SpaceX already has. Reusable boosters were seen as "uneconomical" and "pointless unless they can fly 10 times" by industry experts. They're now flying 30+times a booster. LEO const…

Yet spacex is losing money … only StarLink is profitable.

Re: The unbearable cheapness of open weight models

#60

Post by AnthonyMouse »

pjc50 wrote: post #54
arikrahman wrote: post #6

With cache hit rates being effectively free, harnesses like Reasonix have let me do a month of work for less than 2 dollars. It's not even the subsidies making it cheap, American providers like Digital Ocean or Cloudflare host the same model with similar pricing.

How does caching help here? How much repetition is there in queries?

It probably depends on what you're doing, but imagine you're something in the shape of a search engine. How many user queries are unique vs. the same thing someone else searched for an hour ago?
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