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Kolibri: A Sovereign Open-Weight Model

668 points · 327 comments · bastitx

  1. miellaby · · focus · HN ↗
    The paper explains absolutely everything as if it was a tutorial &quot;how to made your own modern agentic LLM&quot;. They even tell how they made their dataset. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;aleph-alpha.com&#x2F;downloads&#x2F;tech-report.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;aleph-alpha.com&#x2F;downloads&#x2F;tech-report.pdf ; It&#x27;s the first time I see this level of openness.
    1. ofjcihen · · focus · HN ↗
      Hopefully this becomes the new standard.

      It’s seemed crazy to me that anyone thought these could stay closed or even SHOULD be closed source.

      1. Loquebantur · · focus · HN ↗
        Be cautious what you wish for. Tools don&#x27;t tell you what to do with them.

        Open source LLMs &quot;democratize&quot; access to the &quot;intelligence booster&quot; that is AI. But while that has several benefits, it also has several downsides.

        Humanity has the serious problem of being underdeveloped in the &quot;spiritual&quot; department. Ethics is often considered some sort of lifestyle choice, but it&#x27;s actually the difference between order and chaos in a society.

        Everybody being able to do anything means somebody will be able to do something you don&#x27;t like. At an arbitrary scale.

        1. ofjcihen · · focus · HN ↗
          Oh definitely, and I’m in the cybersecurity space so I’m already on the “worst case scenario committee” hah.

          But the alternative just seems… so much worse to me?

          A select few groups gating access to the ability to do everything seems like neo-fuedalism in the making.

          And to be fair even the gating that we do have (daybreak, CVP, etc.) is already being circumvented via keys being stolen and sold on the dark web.

          1. Loquebantur · · focus · HN ↗
            Yes, a &quot;select&quot; (rather, self-selected) elite &quot;controlling&quot; AI according to their wishes, what could go wrong?

            Clearly not a &quot;better&quot; scenario. The real problem though seems people feigning helplessness? You can&#x27;t leave society &quot;to its own&quot;. You are part of it and go where it goes. So better start steering.

            When access to AI gives you abilities you cannot use responsibly, you shouldn&#x27;t have access to that. Just like you shouldn&#x27;t be allowed to drive a car or fly a plane or command a rocket without proper guardrails, safeguards, prerequisites, etc.

            &quot;General&quot; intelligence isn&#x27;t present in humans, why does it need to be in AI?

            1. throwaway27448 · · focus · HN ↗
              &gt; When access to AI gives you abilities you cannot use responsibly

              I don&#x27;t think this is realistically a problem at all. It just makes certain types of research cheaper and less time-consuming. And, again, this is also a problem with the american services.

            2. skinfaxi · · focus · HN ↗
              &gt; When access to AI gives you abilities you cannot use responsibly, you shouldn&#x27;t have access to that.

              What do you mean &quot;cannot&quot;? As in you are granted abilities that have no responsible use?

              1. Loquebantur · · focus · HN ↗
                &quot;Cannot&quot; as in presently cannot. That includes the case of things that have no responsible use.

                You live in a curated world and rarely or never encounter such things. Precisely because your environment is curated that way.

                Look at how you can&#x27;t buy WMDs. They have no responsible use for you.

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