> you could train your own Imagen for ~200000$ If my experience in machine learning (which admittedly is small scale) is applicable to these large-scale projec

> you could train your own Imagen for ~200000$ If my experience in machine learning (which admittedly is small scale) is applicable to these large-scale projects, I'd say that for each press-ready model there are probably dozens of previous attempts/versions that didn't make the cut. So I'd always add an order of magnitude on top of the final model cost. > The big tech exceptionalism is overblown, you don't really need exotic engineering to train an LLM with Jax and a TPU pod, or whatever accelerator you managed to procure. While I agree with you that the current best models are still within reach of motivated small-medium sized groups outside of big tech, if the scaling hypothesis holds up, the next big step forward is likely even larger and more expensive models. I was skeptical of the scaling hypothesis before, but much less so now. > petition our governments to train & make available large models under permissive licenses I would say that if it comes to this we are already firmly in the "centralization and monopolization" territory if we have to ask nation-states for their computational generosity.