Apparently not much of one. There are, what, 5 or more companies with frontier models? And open weights models like MiniMax are snapping at their heels
Obviously product areas differ for reasons structural and happenstance. But there is definitely a pattern that occurs, where open source fast follows commercial advances, benefiting from having a clear target to develop for.
Which is of course, a great service. Even if it never unseats the commercial version, it forces the owners to reinvest more in improvements, by undermining their moats. As well as providing a much better value alternative version for many people.
Maybe because they don't have to. If someone is doing the heavy work and they can take output of that, it's a win for them.
That chart doesn't really pass the sniff test.
"On the other hand, Perrault noted that 'Epoch AI independently estimates Grok 4’s emissions to be significantly higher at approximately 140,000 tons of CO₂.'"
I realize these are still estimates, but when the other independent analysis nearly doubles the outcome I'm not left feeling optimistic. One could argue some numbers from others are underestimates... which of course just bums me out all the more!
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/03/elon-musk-xa...
Sure, but what I'd really like to see is a graph for how much carbon is generated serving these models globally.
The absence speaks volumes.
Outsourcing manufacturing capacity to China and letting domestic manufacturing skills atrophy and institutional knowledge die out was a choice that many people opposed but were ultimately helpless to stop because the people making the decisions ignored them and did it anyways for personal gain is how we got here.
You'd think that the supply chain shocks that we saw during COVID would be a wake up call that would have jolted people into action.
You'd think that Ukraine-Russia war would have been a wake up call that would have jolted people into action.
You'd think that the recent failures by the US military in Iran and the depletion of years of missile stockpiles would have been a wake up call that would have jolted people into action.
I'm at a loss to explain it. It's like the American oligarchs want to weaken America, or at least are willing to do so if it means that they have greater control over it. Maybe they don't care about manufacturing capacity because they know that America is ultimately a nuclear protected island and that even if things continue to decline they'll be safe to rule it like a king?