The Model You Audit Is Not the Model You Ship | TechPolicy.Press
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Almost every LLM that reaches a broad audience is quantized—with under-appreciated ramifications for AI safety, writes Emilio Ferrara.
Linus Zoll & Google DeepMind / Better Images of AI / Generative Image models / CC-BY 4.0 Almost every large language model that reaches a broad audience is quantized. It is trained at full precision, then compressed so it can run affordably on a phone, on a laptop, on a server rack a fraction of the size originally needed. Compression is what makes local and low-cost AI economically possible, and it is spreading quickly. It is also treated as a nonevent for safety. The model is evaluated at full precision, the compressed build inherits the evaluation, and only rarely does anyone recheck.…
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