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It's all extremely dystopian and I don't see how things improve. The handful of megacorps that have access to the compute and troves of stolen IP to train their

It's all extremely dystopian and I don't see how things improve. The handful of megacorps that have access to the compute and troves of stolen IP to train their secret models on have no incentive to contribute back. They say their models are too dangerous for the public, so they can nerf the GA versions while allowing only their preferred megacorp or nation state partners access to the real secret good versions. We can hope the Chinese open weight models will catch up, but if/when they really reach parity with proprietary frontier models you can bet they'll stop releasing their weights too. They don't do this stuff out of the kindness of their hearts. It's tough to imagine what might possibly derail this.

someothherguyy 4mo ago
> It's tough to imagine what might possibly derail this. Public utilities?
logancbrown 4mo ago
Chinese open weight models will be forced to do the same to remain competitive with other frontier labs. The moat is data going forward.
nicce 4mo ago
> The handful of megacorps that have access to the compute and troves of stolen IP to train their secret models on have no incentive to contribute back. Meta and Anthropic both trained on pirated books and there were not required to destroy their models. I simply don't get it. It just encourages to do things first and see later what happens. Regulations are just a small business cost.
- thefounder 4mo ago
  You got it right! Regulations are just for small guys! You don’t see agents after Anthropic’s CEO or after Sam Altman as we’ve seen on Kim Dotcom
zozbot234 4mo ago
Realistically, local/open weight models will always be limited in idiosyncratic world knowledge compared to the proprietary frontier. There's just very limited upside to releasing tens or hundreds of terabytes of open weights for something that literally can only run in very large AI data centers, and Fable/Mythos is near enough to that class. Smaller models can be smart in very real ways, but the extent to which those "smarts" can apply to real-world problems will be limited.
- Matl 4mo ago
  I think the best bet is that that at some point going from 30B params to 9T params is realistically going to give the closed model a 10% edge in niche tasks, but that the open model would be very useful most of the time still. I don't know how realistic that expectation is, but if you think about the difference between say 10,000 USD speakers and 50,000 speakers then the 50k ones may sound slightly better but certainly not enough to justify the 40k difference
  - ProfessorLayton 4mo ago
    It's also proven over and over again that people are okay with "good enough" 99% of the time: - Smartphone cameras > dedicated cameras - "UHD" streaming video > UHD Blueray @3-7x the bitrate - 128kbps music streams > CDs - Airpods > equally priced but much better sounding headphones Sure the nicer stuff still exists and is indeed more performant, but it's not cheap and it's also not what's driving the market. I don't see why this won't apply to AI once local models become "good enough" too.
thewebguyd 4mo ago
> They don't do this stuff out of the kindness of their hearts No, but they do have incentive to continue to release with open weights because doing so directly affects the US based labs that are doing this for profit and power. What's likely to happen is import controls on software as a form of US protectionism. It will be the encryption battle all over again, but this time about your right to both run AI models locally on your own hardware (that the labs and big tech would love if you could continue to not able to afford or acquire so they can rent it to you), and a ban on the distribution and use of foreign models. I wouldn't be surprised of Anthropic and OpenAI also successfully lobby for a limit on how big open source models can be in the US as well in the name of "safety." Make no mistake, they all fully intend to pull the ladder up behind them, and they intend to do it soon.
- thefounder 4mo ago
  You can see already a lot of PR from Anthropic on this(ban the unsafe open source) in all major newspapers(I.e WSJ,Ft etc).
- khuey 4mo ago
  I don't think there's any realistic way to block importing open source models.
treis 4mo ago
I don't think this makes much sense. The best filter is money and they're not going to go through this convoluted malarkey to limit their customers. IMHO this is about protecting their model. If you can get a N-1 model for 1% of the N cost their business breaks down.
bobdvb 4mo ago
What's interesting about the rise of the mega weight models is that if you look at the smaller models of the same family you see some significant improvements over time. So there's possibly some trickle down, at least some learning from techniques that is improving things across all model classes. The other interesting one is how some of the Chinese open weights models have changed licenses that prevent some commercial exploitation of them. That's not closing their doors, but it's some steps towards ensuring their business model is protected.

someothherguyy 4mo ago

> It's tough to imagine what might possibly derail this. Public utilities?

logancbrown 4mo ago

Chinese open weight models will be forced to do the same to remain competitive with other frontier labs. The moat is data going forward.

nicce 4mo ago

> The handful of megacorps that have access to the compute and troves of stolen IP to train their secret models on have no incentive to contribute back. Meta and Anthropic both trained on pirated books and there were not required to destroy their models. I simply don't get it. It just encourages to do things first and see later what happens. Regulations are just a small business cost.

thefounder 4mo ago
You got it right! Regulations are just for small guys! You don’t see agents after Anthropic’s CEO or after Sam Altman as we’ve seen on Kim Dotcom

zozbot234 4mo ago

Realistically, local/open weight models will always be limited in idiosyncratic world knowledge compared to the proprietary frontier. There's just very limited upside to releasing tens or hundreds of terabytes of open weights for something that literally can only run in very large AI data centers, and Fable/Mythos is near enough to that class. Smaller models can be smart in very real ways, but the extent to which those "smarts" can apply to real-world problems will be limited.

Matl 4mo ago
I think the best bet is that that at some point going from 30B params to 9T params is realistically going to give the closed model a 10% edge in niche tasks, but that the open model would be very useful most of the time still. I don't know how realistic that expectation is, but if you think about the difference between say 10,000 USD speakers and 50,000 speakers then the 50k ones may sound slightly better but certainly not enough to justify the 40k difference
- ProfessorLayton 4mo ago
  It's also proven over and over again that people are okay with "good enough" 99% of the time: - Smartphone cameras > dedicated cameras - "UHD" streaming video > UHD Blueray @3-7x the bitrate - 128kbps music streams > CDs - Airpods > equally priced but much better sounding headphones Sure the nicer stuff still exists and is indeed more performant, but it's not cheap and it's also not what's driving the market. I don't see why this won't apply to AI once local models become "good enough" too.

thewebguyd 4mo ago

> They don't do this stuff out of the kindness of their hearts No, but they do have incentive to continue to release with open weights because doing so directly affects the US based labs that are doing this for profit and power. What's likely to happen is import controls on software as a form of US protectionism. It will be the encryption battle all over again, but this time about your right to both run AI models locally on your own hardware (that the labs and big tech would love if you could continue to not able to afford or acquire so they can rent it to you), and a ban on the distribution and use of foreign models. I wouldn't be surprised of Anthropic and OpenAI also successfully lobby for a limit on how big open source models can be in the US as well in the name of "safety." Make no mistake, they all fully intend to pull the ladder up behind them, and they intend to do it soon.

thefounder 4mo ago
You can see already a lot of PR from Anthropic on this(ban the unsafe open source) in all major newspapers(I.e WSJ,Ft etc).
khuey 4mo ago
I don't think there's any realistic way to block importing open source models.

treis 4mo ago

I don't think this makes much sense. The best filter is money and they're not going to go through this convoluted malarkey to limit their customers. IMHO this is about protecting their model. If you can get a N-1 model for 1% of the N cost their business breaks down.

bobdvb 4mo ago

What's interesting about the rise of the mega weight models is that if you look at the smaller models of the same family you see some significant improvements over time. So there's possibly some trickle down, at least some learning from techniques that is improving things across all model classes. The other interesting one is how some of the Chinese open weights models have changed licenses that prevent some commercial exploitation of them. That's not closing their doors, but it's some steps towards ensuring their business model is protected.