This was an insightful comment. The winnowing effect of market conditions should not be underestimated.
I love the Wild West that is the local LLM scene right now, but I wonder how long the party will last. I predict that the groups with the capacity to produce novel, state-of-the-art LLMs will be seduced by profit to keep those models closed, and as those models that could run on consumer hardware become increasingly capable, the safety concerns (legitimate or not) will eventually smother their open nature. We may continue to get weights for toy versions of those new flagship models, but I suspect their creators will reserve the top-shelf stuff for their subscription customers, and they can easily cite safety as a reason for it. I can’t really blame them, either. Why give it away for free when you can become rich off your invention?
This was an insightful comment. The winnowing effect of market conditions should not be underestimated.
I love the Wild West that is the local LLM scene right now, but I wonder how long the party will last. I predict that the groups with the capacity to produce novel, state-of-the-art LLMs will be seduced by profit to keep those models closed, and as those models that could run on consumer hardware become increasingly capable, the safety concerns (legitimate or not) will eventually smother their open nature. We may continue to get weights for toy versions of those new flagship models, but I suspect their creators will reserve the top-shelf stuff for their subscription customers, and they can easily cite safety as a reason for it. I can’t really blame them, either. Why give it away for free when you can become rich off your invention?
Hopefully I’ll be proven wrong. 🤞 We’ll see…