[fnetisma]

Iterative leaps of open-source models becoming better are huge examples that companies competing on LLM model layer have an ephemeral moat.

Serious question: assuming this is true, if an incumbent-challenger like OpenAI wants to win, how do they effectively compete against current services such as Meta and Google product offerings which can be AI enhanced in a snap?

[123yawaworht456]

the very first big AI company who gives up trying to lobotomize and emasculate their models to align with the values of 0.01% of the world population will win a lot of hearts and minds overnight. the censorship necessary for corporate applications can be trivially implemented as a toggleable layer, using a small, efficient, specialist model to detect no-no words and wrongthink in inputs/outputs.

gpt, claude, gemini, even llama and mistral, all tend to produce the same nauseating slop, easily-recognizable by anyone familiar with LLMs - these days, I cringe when I read 'It is important to remember' even when I see it in some ancient, pre-slop writings.

creativity - one of the very few applications generative AI can truly excel at - is currently impossible. it could revolutionize entertainment, but it isn't allowed to. the models are only allowed to produce inoffensive, positivity-biased, sterile slop that no human being finds attractive.

[andy99]

> the censorship necessary for corporate applications can be trivially implemented as a toggleable layer, using a small, efficient, specialist model to detect no-no words and wrongthink in inputs/outputs.

What's really funny is they all have "jailbreaks" that you can use to make then say anything anyway. So for "corporate" uses, the method you propose is already mandatory. The whole thing (censoring base models) is a misguided combination of ideology and (over the top) risk aversion.

[cosmojg]

> creativity - one of the very few applications generative AI can truly excel at - is currently impossible. it could revolutionize entertainment, but it isn't allowed to. the models are only allowed to produce inoffensive, positivity-biased, sterile slop that no human being finds attractive.

Have you played around with base models? If you haven't yet, I'm sure you'll be happy to find that most base models are delightfully unslopped and uncensored.

I highly recommend trying a base model like davinci-002[1] in OpenAI's "legacy" Completions API playground. That's probably the most accessible, but if you're technically inclined, you can pair a base model like Llama3-70B[2] with an interface like Mikupad[3] and do some brilliant creative writing. Llama3 models can be run locally with something like Ollama[4], or if you don't have the compute for it, via an LLM-as-a-service platform like OpenRouter[5].

[1] https://platform.openai.com/docs/models/gpt-base

[2] https://huggingface.co/meta-llama/Meta-Llama-3-70B

[3] https://github.com/lmg-anon/mikupad

[4] https://ollama.com/library/llama3:70b-text

[5] https://openrouter.ai/models/meta-llama/llama-3-70b

[Hugsun]

I think you vastly overestimate how much people care about model censorship. There are a bunch of open models that aren't censored. Llama 3 is still way more popular because it's just smarter.

[malfist]

Please explain what you mean when you say the 0.01% are emasculating AI

[otterley]

I think you have your populations reversed. The number of people who get their knickers in a twist over LLMs reflecting certain cultural biases (and sometimes making foolish predictions in the process) amounts to a rounding error.

[AnthonyMouse]

> gpt, claude, gemini, even llama and mistral, all tend to produce the same nauseating slop, easily-recognizable by anyone familiar with LLMs

Does grok do this, given where it came out of?

[cal85]

Their moat atm is being 6 months ahead of everyone else on model quality. Plus the ‘startup’ advantage over their corporate competitors. Oh and they can hoard a lot of the best talent because it’s an extremely high status place to work.

Their task now is to maintain and exploit those advantages as best they can while they build up a more stable long term moat: lots of companies having their tech deeply integrated into their operations.

[andy99]

Just to add, they don't have the baggage of google or Meta so they can do more without worrying how it impacts the rest of the company. And of the big players they seem the most aware of how important good data is and have paid for lots of high quality curated fine tuning data in order to build a proper product instead of doing a research project. That mindset and the commercial difference it makes shouldn't be underestimated.

[myko]

> Their moat atm is being 6 months ahead of everyone else on model quality

Really? Most of our testing now has Gemini Pro on par or better (though we haven't tested omni/Ultra)

It really seems like the major models have all topped out / are comparable

[golergka]

They scare the government into regulating the field into oblivion.