posted in Technology
If open weight models are the future, U.S. AI companies are going to have a hard time
www.fastcompany.com/91577359/why-u-s-ai-companies-cant-match-chinas-open-weight-frontier-models
Fast CompanyIf open weight models are the future, U.S. AI companies are going to have a hard timeOpenAI, Anthropic, and other Western labs have spent billions training the model weights at the heart of their most advanced systems.
Replying to @sanitation@lemmy.today
The awkward part is that software has a habit of racing toward free once it becomes good enough. If an open weight model delivers 95 percent of the value without recurring API costs, plenty of companies will choose that and spend the savings on integration instead. History keeps rhyming, even if investors hate the tune.
Replying to @eicker@lemmy.world
The awkward part is that software has a habit of racing toward free once it becomes good enough
Has it? Jira, Teams, Slack, Google Meet, Cisco WebX… There’s obviously Jitsi but I don’t see companies racing towards it. When it comes to SaaS most companies prefer to pay and be done with it. Few are choosing to host open source solutions. Windows and Mac are also way more popular than Linux in office settings. With LLMs hosting it will be even more complicated because companies will have to invest heavily in GPUs.
If the bubble bursts companies will lose funds to work on new models but someone will still be able to offer existing models as a service. Companies will chose the one with better price and functionality. Being free or not will have little to do with it.
Replying to @ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net
They don’t have to host it themselves. They could use a number of providers for the same model, and basically keep doing whatever they were doing with OpenAI/Anthropic via the exact same APIs.
Replying to @brucethemoose@lemmy.world
Of course but they would have to pay for accessing it and the company with more efficient model will offer it at lower prices and most likely win customers. Having open weights doesn’t change anything here.
Replying to @ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net
Of course it does. It prevents oligopolies.
Replying to @Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works
I guess it could help limit the price gauging by the few companies that will have the best models but so would the ability to hire junior devs.
Replying to @ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net
Well, the current state is that there are a couple of “best” models, but literally hundreds of independent providers serving them. As an example, one can get GLM 5.1 from its trainer, or one can get it from DigitalOcean, or Baidu, or SiliconFlow ASICs, or get it at very high speed from Cerebras ASICs, or AMD providers, or finetune it from a number of services, or rent the self hosting…
The companies aren’t keeping the models to themselves, and that blows the marketplace open to a boatload of competitors.