How Far Ahead Are Open Source AI Models?

Marc Andreessen says open models are lapping closed models by six months to 12 months, depending on how you count, and open source is racing ahead.

The U.S. and China, the two great tech superpowers, both have active open source worlds alongside companies building proprietary systems. For the last three or four years, governments have threatened draconian regulation or a ban on open source. The EU still aspires to do it and does not quite have the leverage to threaten fines until the work stops. The current U.S. administration is 100% pro-open source and 100% wants American open source to happen and to win AI globally. The Chinese Communist Party is, at the moment, enthusiastic about open source AI for the world, which comes as a surprise.

The other stake is who gets to learn. A parent would go pretty crazy if the only way a kid could learn about AI were to go to work for one of two companies. In an open source world, every kid can learn how the technology works. AI will teach you about AI, with one exception: models from certain large companies refuse to do that. Open source models 100% will teach you how to make open source AI. Every kid in the world should have, as a birthright, the ability to fully understand and use the technology.