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Kolibri: A Sovereign Open-Weight Model

671 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. computerdork · · focus · HN ↗
          Ah, didn&#x27;t think of this. Some rogue militia group might try to use this LLM (or create their own LLM based on this work) to help them create biological weapons or to do a mass hacking the infrastructure of targeted country.

          Wonder what safeguards Kolibri uses to prevent this? Or if they even can

          1. Zigurd · · focus · HN ↗
            Chemical and biological warfare is hard. A cult in Japan created a mass casualty event using nerve gas. Which is the only somewhat &quot;successful&quot; terrorist WMD attack I know of. Knowledge of how to create these weapons isn&#x27;t new. Guns and bombs are the most widely used terror weapons for a reason.
            1. UberFly · · focus · HN ↗
              Enter LLMs to help through all those pesky hard parts.
              1. shawabawa3 · · focus · HN ↗
                The hard part is probably finding the lab equipment and chemicals without being noticed, and choosing not to use it to manufacture drugs instead which would be much more profitable
              2. throwaway27448 · · focus · HN ↗
                Intelligence was never the bottleneck tho
                1. happosai · · focus · HN ↗
                  For terrorists it is tho. Four lions is basically a documentary. The only clever and creative terror attack happened 25 years ago.
                  1. throwaway27448 · · focus · HN ↗
                    What&#x27;s stopping them from using claude today? What could anyone possibly do to stop them from using open models? This line of thought seems like corporate&#x2F;political&#x2F;pr pandering more than a meaningful concern.
                  2. skinfaxi · · focus · HN ↗
                    Didn&#x27;t Mexican cartels kidnap telco workers to build them separate infra? We expect terrorists to be less resourceful?
                    1. happosai · · focus · HN ↗
                      Well yes. drug cartels have a revenue source.

                      Miscreants with even half a braincell will find themselves in illegal drugs business over terrorism.

                      Political and religious fanatics with even a half a braincell figure out terrorism will only damage their cause.

                      People who end up as terrorists have already failed the two above tests.

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