The future of foundation models is closed-source

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Two seemingly contradictory but equally popular narratives about the future of foundation models have taken hold. In one future, AI centralizes: scaling laws will hold, and value accrues primarily to scaled, closed-source players. In the other future, AI decentralizes: foundation models have no moat, open-source has caught up to closed-source, and we’ll have many competing models. Today, both narratives seem true. We have powerful closed models, and a thriving ecosystem of sacrosanct open-source models. Llama-3 recently put open-source on the map of GPT-4 class models. Meanwhile, an unusual open-source alliance has formed among developers who want handouts, academics who embrace publishing culture, libertarians who fear centralized speech control and regulatory capture, Elon who doesn’t want his nemesis to win AI, and Zuck who doesn’t want to be beholden to yet another tech platform. As an accelerant of modern software, open-source maintains a cherished place in tech. Who can argue wit

The future of foundation models is closed-source if the centralizing forces of data and compute hold, open and closed-source AI cannot both dominate long-term John Luttig May 21, 2024 99 19 10 Share The walled garden sure looks nice. Two seemingly contradictory but equally popular narratives about the future of foundation models have taken hold. In one future, AI centralizes: scaling laws will hold, and value accrues primarily to scaled, closed-source players. In the other future, AI decentralizes: foundation models have no moat, open-source has caught up to closed-source, and we’ll have many

The future of foundation models is closed-source

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