242
If open weight models are the future, U.S. AI companies are going to have a hard time (www.fastcompany.com)
submitted 22 hours ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
80 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 5 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

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.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 1 hour ago (1 child)

    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.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 17 minutes ago (1 child)

    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.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 6 points 11 hours ago (1 child)

    Unfortunately, based on many years of experience, I have to agree. However, I also see a light at the end of the tunnel, particularly in Europe, where there is a growing desire to break free from the US SaaS stranglehold, using open source software.

    Regarding OWAI I see a fundamental difference: Slack isn’t just software, it’s a hosted service with identity, storage and network effects.

    An open weight model is more like a compiler: once downloaded, nobody can revoke it. You may still pay for inference, but pricing power drops when anyone can host the same model.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 50 minutes ago (1 child)

    particularly in Europe, where there is a growing desire to break free from the US SaaS stranglehold, using open source software.

    I'm sorry, but it took EXTREME provocation to get Europe to start to talk about moving, again. Previous starts to move to open source software across Europe have mostly faltered and reverted to the comfort of handing cash to foreign companies.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 47 minutes ago

    Because it was always so wonderfully easy to do nothing. Costs have risen, and new realities are increasingly being created in both politics and the economy: in France, Denmark, Schleswig-Holstein and so many other places, large and small.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent