Comment Re:American Open Weight Models (Score 1) 95
DeepMind has released Gemma 4, which doesn't include their largest models, but 31B is a creditable model. I wish I could say the same about the 26B-A4B model, which is just smart enough to be entertaining for a few days or weeks, then everything it does starts to sound the same. Unfortunately, 31B on my hardware (i5-8500, 48 GB DDR4, 12 GB RTX 3060) runs at 0.3 to 1.2 t/s. So while I'm not a big fan of Alphabet's business practices at large, they aren't regressing. Switching to the MIT license basically means they're abdicating all control over derivatives.
The only thing Grok ever really did for open weight AI was show up for the party a couple times. At first, this helped establish a baseline that could never be retracted, but it hasn't proven to be particularly important. Everything since has been far off the bleeding edge, but they collect their participation trophies. I think their subsequent actions have gone a long way toward demonstrating their purposes, which are wholly selfish. They'll do as little as they can to contribute while retaining the benefits of being perceived as open and competitive.