Seems like "open source" as a marketing tactic (or perhaps strategy, if they do continue to release open models) has peaked. I'm not really complaining, we get a lot of stuff for free as engineers (especially software), but it does seem different for a company to release an open model without any future commitments (e.g. Google) vs making open weights your raison d'etre and then pivoting quite quickly. The first feels transactional but honest, and the other a bit too... machiavellian?

I do think it's too soon to pass judgement; this could just be a normal "freemium" strategy from days old, where you just pay up if you like the smaller/cheaper/free versions of their models.

This is big tech or whoever using big money to lock up what they think is the dawn of 'true AI'.

Buying people off is pretty easy! I'm sure I'd feel the same way and take the money.

But just like you can't write an iPhone app without Apple's consent, soon we won't be able to do any serious AI work without the consent of, and payment to, MS or Google or whoever.

I wonder what the talented people at OpenAI or Mistral tell themselves. That they're doing something good for society or technology? Probably, but already AI is being concentrated into a few hands. Nvidia has a virtual monopoly on hardware and training huge models is out of reach, open research got us here but that's looking increasingly shaky.

Personally I think LLMs are a red herring, so there is still a chance to change the outcome, but we should take a lesson from what's transpired with OpenAI and Mistral and only support actual open development.

Maybe it was required per the Microsoft investment. I wouldn't be surprised.

Mistral just doesn't seem like an interesting company to me any more.

They started off as the kind of people who released their models as magnet links and made them actually user-aligned instead of California-aligned. This is what I like to see from an AI company. Now, their models are no different from Open AI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and everybody else.

Straight after a MS investment? Pretty sure somewhere a MS competition lawyer just choked on his bagel.

Also what’s the deal with company commitments being more like one night stands these days

It seems to me that large software companies often adopt an open-source approach initially to attract enthusiasts and stand out from leading competitors, but tend to adopt similar philosophies as their rivals once they achieve significant recognition or investment.

It's all a marketing tactic, and I ain't for it.

Model developments have become seriously capital intensive endeavors. Probably Mistral found themselves cornered by this commitment and they won't be able to secure any serious investments without changing this stance, MSFT in this case.

Damn, I was hoping Mistral would carry the open source torch for AI. I might be forced to create an actual open source AI company.

I hope they keep tweeting magnet links for model releases :(

good thing that https://huggingface.co/TheBloke/dolphin-2_2-yi-34b-GGUF surpasses even Mixtral MoE. Let's hope this continues.

They imagined that it would be really difficult to run the models locally, so people wouldn't bother, but with stuff like llama.c & friends it's trivial.

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39511530

I suppose the only major player in open source models will be META then

I cannot let me get tired of repeating this:

the underlying fundamental problem is that capitalism does not play nice with digital assets.

an AI model is a very valuable digital asset right now, so there's a covert war being fought over public access to this.

From reddit:

  Chinese models seem to be the last hope now, LOL.

(Edit, reminds me a bit of the silicon valley joke where Erlich tells Jin Yang he can't smoke in California as we don't enjoy the same freedoms you do in China)

Time to build a moat.

That’s a shame—we cannot allow a handful of companies and VCs to capture most of the value of AI, especially if it actually starts replacing human jobs, it’ll just accelerate wealth inequality and social unrest.