AI Vibe Check: Chinese Open Models, Distillation & The Hugging Face Breach

So maybe to start it off, uh, Ari, I feel like you've been vindicated.

You, you, you...

Earlier this year, you kind of said, "I think there's gonna be a Chinese open source model that's gonna be the world's best at something." Uh, you're, you're looking pretty smart, uh, with how things have shaped out.

Uh, what, what's your read on how this has all kinda happened?

Yeah.

Well, I mean, pleased with that prediction obviously.

Uh, but, but I think this trend is, is gonna continue.

Um, I, I don't know if they're gonna continue to be fully open.

So for example, if you look at K3, um, they adjusted the license to have a revenue gate, uh, on it now.

So, you know, there's a conservative revenue gate for model as a service and then, uh, you know, less conservative one for otherwise.

But, uh, if you make more than, you know, 20 million a year or 200 million a year, depending on the, the threshold, or 20 million a month, I'm sorry, depending on the threshold, you can't use it without a commercial license at that point.

Um, I have a feeling we're gonna see a lot more of those starting to come out, um, across the board.

Um, but I do think we're gonna continue to see extremely strong models, uh, coming, um, out from China, and then also, you know, now we have Inkling from Thinky and a couple others, uh, from US players, um, that will hopefully continue to, to, uh, fill out that space.

Um-

Yeah

...

but I think this trend is only gonna continue with seeing powerful models that are in the open and that are outside of the frontier labs.

Yeah.

I mean, I think, Rob, you had said last time you were a little skeptical of the, of the, of the open source business models, and so maybe we're starting to see the, uh, the, the, the outlines of how that might, uh, come forward.

Like do you kind of, uh, uh, you know, is this inevitable that, like, this, this kind of new model's required, and is that, is that 20 a month gonna come down pretty, uh, pretty soon for, for, to be a little more all-encompassing?

Well, I...

So first on this topic, I would say while there is no question that Ari is very wise, um, I, I would-

[laughs]

I, I would actually posit that I think the Kimi K3 launch and, and other open models, like, I think they've been, I think it's been oversold a little bit how big of a milestone it is, because, like, I don't f- I don't think K3 is actually state-of-the-art in any real sense.

Like I know there are certain, there are certain categories that it outperformed, but the, the, like it's important to keep in mind that Kimi K3 is being compared to Fable, which is itself a, like, neutered version of Mythos, which itself was finished training in like February or March.