alt Hacker NewsOpen source models are still a year or so behind the SotA models released the last few months. The price to performance is definitely in favor of Open Source models however.
DeepMind is actively using Google’s LLMs on groundbreaking research. Anthropic is focused on security for businesses.
For consumers it’s still a better deal for a subscription than to invest a few grand in a personal LLM machine. There will be a time in the future where diminishing returns shortens this gap significantly, but I’m sure top LLM researchers are planning for this and will do whatever they can to keep their firm alive beyond the cost of scaling.
Definitely
I am not suggesting these companies can't pivot or monetize elsewhere, but the return on developing a marginally better model in-house does not really justify the cost at this stage.
But to your point, developing research, drugs, security audits or any kind of services are all monetization of the application of the model, not the monetization of the development of new models.
Put more simply, say you develop the best LLM in the world, that's 15% better than peers on release at the cost of $5B. What is that same model/asset worth 1 year later when it performs at 85% of the latest LLM?
Already any 2023 and perhaps even 2024 vintage model is dead in the water and close to 0 value.
What is a best in class model built in 2025 going to be worth in 2026?
The asset is effectively 100% depreciated within a single year.
(Though I'm open to the idea that the results from past training runs can be reused for future models. This would certainly change the math)