The Unbearable Cheapness of Open Weight Models
The author discusses the growing price disparity between proprietary AI models from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic versus cheaper, open-weight alternatives like DeepSeek. The piece argues that high costs for frontier models may be a strategy to manufacture scarcity and maintain luxury brand status.
Why it matters
The debate over AI pricing and accessibility highlights a growing divide between closed-source 'frontier' models and the open-source movement.
Today I was setting up Hermes to see how it does with web research. I chose DeepSeek V4 because I know it is cheap, but seeing it s pricing next to Anthropic and OpenAI frontier models is crazy. Nearly a 50x price increase based on tokens alone, let alone how much pondering any of their models might fall into (using more tokens for the same task).
The author expresses a clear preference for open-source technology and critiques corporate monopolistic practices.
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