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The Economics of Open-Weight Inference

58 points · 27 comments · marinesebastian

  1. jcmontx · · focus · HN ↗
    The problem, IMO, with open-weight models is that you accustom to the capabilities of frontier models too quickly; and downgrading to an open-weight "frontier minus 2" or "frontier minus 3" model is often painful, since they feel way less useful than their newer closed-weights counterpart. To be honest, I don't know any companies using OW models at a large scale for their operations (agents or chat assistants).
    1. lowbloodsugar · · focus · HN ↗
      I’ve found the opposite. Going from Opus 5 to Qwen3.8 flash has been a breath of fresh air.
      1. orsorna · · focus · HN ↗
        It was a breath of fresh air for me because it was nice going to a model that is "smart enough".
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