The current balance of power in open models
interconnects.ai87 points by gmays 11 hours ago
87 points by gmays 11 hours ago
It's becoming more clear that for big enterprises to really adopt AI, they need to use open models. Especially if they want to own their own intelligence, which they should.
I spent the last 2 days building basic AI agents to automate some mundane supply chain workflows for a large company. Those seemingly boring workflows had bank statements, supplier IDs and other sensitive information.
For me it was all alarm bells, there is no way they can afford to give closed models access to this data. I was compelled to figure out an open model based solution for them, which made me realize that this is probably the only way for enterprises going forward.
Everybody including companies need their own models, especially considering that llm providers like openAi have no problem siphoning off your data and intelligence by inspecting metadata. and claiming any resulting value as their own.
Why does this necessitate using closed models? I don't see the difference between putting your data on a cloud DB and using a cloud model.
Because the big labs are incredibly untrustworthy. Their leaders are publicly lying constantly.
Same here. We are at a stage where we are evaluating cost/benefit for my enterprise. I am heavily pushing for in house hardware with open models.
I've actually flipped on this the last few days because of liability.
The big labs are going to be on the hook for rogue behavior by Claude or Sol. Customers will be able to sue for damages and deflect regulators if their customer data is abused or their agents attack external services.
If you use a Chinese OSS model and it goes rogue? Yeah good luck with that, your shop is 100% on the hook.
People - usually suit-wearers - have been making this spurious claim for decades, but it doesn't hold water.
The largest of the finest print reminding you that it's 'sold as is' (or more encompassing variants that might continue '... with no warranty for fitness of purpose') means that liability remains in the lap of the purchaser / consumer / operator.
(This has been a source of immense frustration over my career - where such people have assured me that they have 'recourse' (it's always vaguely described) by spending money on proprietary products & services, rather than opting for functionally equivalent or superior free options.)
I think your third paragraph is implying a distinction (or conflating the difference?) between LLMaaS's and self-hosting publicly available models.
If it's just where it's hosted that provides the legal insulation then things like OpenRouter would give you that. (But again, I suggest that it would not.)
> The big labs are going to be on the hook for rogue behavior
They haven't so far.
I think the minute a big lab is found to be liable, the whole edifice along with trillions of dollars of investment and VC comes tumbling down. I think that is part of the reason the labs are pushing for more regulation. They can say "We're not liable, we complied with all of the regulations". The actions of multi-billion parameter models trained on data harvested from millions of Internet users over the years can never really be understood - if a business is found to be liable for that, then nobody would ever operate in that space.
Enterprises have barely deployed empowered agents yet. The models capable of doing this have only been available for months. Give it a little time, it's coming.
... when are large companies on the hook for anything, ever?
I mean, hypothetically, yes, but class-action lawsuits get settled out-of-court, the lawyers get paid in Ferrari-multiples, the plaintiffs get paid in McDonalds coupons that expire in two weeks.
Slaps-on-the-wrist are written into the laws; a million-dollar fine is existential for a small company, and likely not even a line-item at Anthropic.
The open-weight vs. closed model is wrong comparison, I suggest we call them local-installable models and cloud-only models.
Some open-weight models aren't so open in their license.
Impressive you know. They are a few months behind but still the world uses their models. Bet you because the users suspect that Americans will pull the rug from under them. Few months behind versus being left behind forever. Would have been nice to know the differences in spending between the models but I suspect the data is impossible to collect.
It's not a suspicion, it has actually happened. US government briefly banned Fable for non-americans, and the american corporations pick and choose who has access to their unrestricted models which in practice excludes even american citizens, to say nothing of foreigners like myself.
They are literally segmenting the world into haves and have-nots, just like nuclear power. Thank god China is out there and constantly undermining them with their non-stop open weights model releases.
The best situation for us mere mortals is one where they struggle against each other endlessly without any hope of victory. The second either the US or China wins, it's pretty much over for us and unimaginable oppression will quickly follow.
They are good enough and vastly cheaper. It’s not fear of the future. It’s economic reality of the present.
That’s certainly part of it. I think people underestimate the value of getting to ‘good enough’. Once that’s reached, the economics start to be more of a factor in decision making.
However, I think geopolitics has also become a factor as the very existence of this article indicates.
> However, I think geopolitics has also become a factor
The world powers have only said things like "bigger and more important than the Manhattan project”.
So what gives you that idea?
I’m super uncomfortable with the idea of a single company or country holding all the cards when it comes to AI. So from that perspective I welcome the Chinese models.
Additionally, the big labs’ formulation of AI as a US-vs-China national security issue is very convenient for keeping those pesky regulations at bay, and for ensuring the AI financial bubble doesn’t pop before everyone can unload in an IPO first. Both of these offend my sense of fair play.
The Chinese labs aren’t just putting models out there, they’re publishing and sharing their research and innovation too. That’s just a better way of doing science and contributing to the development of the whole field.
Really important work here. Really glad it's being shared a) with US Leadership and b) with the community.
DeepSeek and Qwen set a floor American open-weight models can't match without subsidy or a different cost structure, and that price/performance ratio drives adoption more than benchmarks.
It's worth noting that Chinese AI labs aren't profitable, so in some sense they're not doing it without subsidy either.
Anthropic is profitable now. They have massive debt looming over them, but they're at least making more than they spend each quarter.
This is a prepared statement for congress by Nathan Lambert, author of https://rlhfbook.com/ and AllenAi employee (one of the few who have shared their models as open source)
Unfortunately Nathan recently left AI2, along with some of the leadership most involved in their truly open models. https://www.geekwire.com/2026/allen-institute-for-ai-ceo-ali...
As an aside, it’s always funny to me that anybody outside of Europe listens to anything the Europeans say about AI. The Europeans literally have zero skin in the game. Their entire raison d’être is just to pass regulations that they then attempt to extraterritorially enforce, but they contribute almost nothing to the area of interest. It’s legit insane to me. The contributions they make vs the amount of inconvenience they are vis-a-vis compliance with their own esoteric rules probably fit some Pareto maximum of 20% of users requiring 80% of the work for compliance. The rest of us (ie, the non-European world) should honestly just point and laugh and then move on when these people try to influence things.
Thank you for sharing this perspective. I agree with the conclusions outlined. However, I would have appreciated more insights into the OpenAI OSS family of models like gpt-oss.
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Not a fan of overregulation killing business, but Europe is definitely an important check against the surveillance powers of big tech companies in US. European regulations become a reference point for the rest of the world, especially poorer countries who dont have power to regulate US tech companies by themselves.