Comment by jacquesm
1 day ago
Even the original DeepSeek is old hat. The capabilities already released are game changers, whether you want to acknowledge that or not is not my affair.
I was using GPT-3 and the original Llama when they came out and realized that it is interesting, but not good enough - yet. But they are good enough now. And just like there are still people driving Renaults and Volkswagens the latest batch of open models will be useful for a long time to come.
So my whole previous comment was a plea to not do exactly this, namely, treat the example of open models like they somehow negate the value or strategic significance of having a model that leads at the frontier. I would submit that it's the core confusion behind the "Deepseek moment" and what it supposedly teaches about the relative strategic positions of different actors in the AI race.
> whether you want to acknowledge that or not is not my affair.
I felt I acknowledged it pretty explicitly. I said the likes of Deepseek are "cheaper and open and that matters", but it's the rest of that sentence that I think went without acknowledgment.
>And just like there are still people driving Renaults and Volkswagens the latest batch of open models will be useful for a long time to come.
Walking is great too! But you're not filling an economic need by selling walking to the masses, and those companies are marginalized and the economic destiny of the world is being set by those who own the infrastructure to build out the world's next generation of electric vehicles (at least in the automotive space).
I think you have to put up some facts to justify the assumption that uber-super-ultra-premium intelligence will continue to be significantly more economically valuable than boring old super-ultra-premium intelligence. Most things in reality have a point of saturation. The AI industry doesn't like to think about that; they prefer to make claims based on promises of infinite exponential growth.
Why does the OP need to bring "facts" to the discussion when none were introduced anywhere else?
I think you're assuming that the options will be: "uber-super-ultra-premium intelligence" and then something like that but only slightly less so and much cheaper. Those aren't the only potential options. One other option is "uber-super-ultra-premium intelligence" and "nothing that really matters".
That seems to be the crux of the "open-weight" models versus "closed" models debate/discussion. I think it's more of a belief system being expressed than it is a reflection of any reality.
Open source software evangelists tend to have a quasi-religious viewpoint on the openness of software and that the model is superior and will always be cheaper and if not better only slightly worse, but because it's cheaper it's better. They will proclaim its universality, and apply it not just to web frameworks but to artificial intelligence, or state secrets, or anything else where there is some secret or knowledge to be held and maintained. If I were to say I think closed-source software is better and more preferable, open-source software evangelists will come out from all corners of the internet to make sure I know how impossible it is for security to be good on closed-source software, or how software yearns to be free or something. Then it turns into "the AI industry ... prefers to make claims about infinite exponential growth".
All of that is just a belief system. It's not scientific or factual. And it clouds judgement.