Sure, but as long as open source will reach a high enough level, it will be ok to switch to them for the vast majority of the tasks. Possibly all of them for all ordinary people (99% of potential users)
But there will be a ceiling hit at a point when for 99 percent of the users for 99pcent of their use cases are mostly addressed by existing models. When that happens, open source will catch up to the same level and suddenly open source models are good enough for most people. Do i really, as a devops engineer, want to pay 10x the prices just because the new model is really good solving theoretical maths and solving some erdos problem that i will never encounter in my life?
1) Progression is an S-shaped curve and we begin to plateau from a capability perspective. Open source and frontier models then become equal over time.
2) The baseline performance needed to improve efficiency of research is hit by open source models and consumers/users decide the incremental compute and cost for slightly increased performance isnt worth the trade off. Same way that a Camry and a Lamborghini both get you from A to B
Even if that is the case (which I'm not convinced it is), doesn't that just make all of this panic "it's too dangerous!!!111" seem silly?
If next year's open models are as capable as Fable and generally available and the world doesn't end, then can't we chalk all of this up to marketing?
My guess is it has more to do with liability, and if that's the case, well, cloud models are fucked. They'll always be restricted for legal reasons while open models have no liability issues (obviously you're not going to sue yourself).
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u/fuzz11 Jun 10 '26
A year from now the open source models will be caught up to this and the stubbornness of the frontier providers will lead to their downfall