147 pointsby gmays2 hours ago20 comments
  • GodelNumberingan hour ago
    This is the golden age of model training. Some days ago, I decided I wanted a local CPU only model that can perform exceptionally well for English to Bash translation (to avoid the googling for command syntax). I got a bunch of subagents to generate large amount of training data (140k+ samples), got the Qwen 3 0.6B base model, pointed Astra at it, and off to the races. It trained for 2 days (on and off) and I got a surprisingly good model for my task! The total active time I spent was a few hours. And it is still improving, what a time to be alive!
    • equinumerous5 minutes ago
      That's a really impressive result. There are all kinds of small tasks like this I use an LLM for, but theoretically if you broke all the sub-use cases into local-only models, and had something lightweight that routed to the right model, you could have faster and cheaper workflows. E.g. something trained on the linux man pages for common commands, since it's usually quicker to ask an LLM for a specific command with flags than to consult the man pages.
    • luisfmh17 minutes ago
      Curious about how you generated the training data? Was it just asking an existing model to generate a bunch of examples?

      I ask cause would this be a kind of model distillation?

      I have a small model I'm looking to train on some data, and I have some real live data but I'd love to be able to extend it.

      • GodelNumbering6 minutes ago
        All synthetic data. For this usecase, it was easier because all current generation LLMs, even the small models, are really good at bash commands (and SQL queries too)), so you can reasonably start batches of cheap subagents whose output is reviewed by a more capable model and merge into main training set. After 100k, I had to standing instructions to run the generation loops selectively, meaning only update samples in a given area where we see poor capability.
    • shriphani43 minutes ago
      what hardware are you using to train?
      • GodelNumbering39 minutes ago
        I didn't have a local GPU, so I asked it to go out and find hardware. It found a google TPU v6e which seemed reasonably priced. I gave it my google api key. I told it to use TPU only when training and bring it down afterwards. That's about it.
        • libria9 minutes ago
          > I gave it my google api key

          This is the part where the narrator looks at the camera and says "Don't try this at home, kids!"

          • edot3 minutes ago
            There’s a safer way to do this with nearly no added friction. Give it a read only API key. Then just ask it to write the API calls into a bash script and then read it and run it yourself. The agent can still inspect the live resources and diagnose and give you more commands to run. I do agree I wouldn’t give it create / write access.
          • MisterMunchkin2 minutes ago
            You’re absolutely right, I shouldn’t have rented a 200 GPU cluster for $35,000/hour. That’s on me.

            [Search: Can I refund Google cloud?]

            It looks like we’re not able to ask for a refund since we did actually use all of that compute intentionally.

            Would you like me to write you a pleading email to send to the support team?

          • bitpush4 minutes ago
            Why? Isnt the API key scoped to a project and specifically made for this?

            Are you confusing this with an OAuth token or something?

        • otterley31 minutes ago
          What kind of observability did you have over this process? I’m interested in how my peers are operating these efforts.
          • GodelNumbering21 minutes ago
            On the cloud side, nothing valuable existed, so the training couldn't ruin anything it didn't create. On the laptop side, I usually ask the agents to create named scripts for everything it needs to access, then those local script directory is green-lit with approve all. For cost, I kept giving it new budget in the 20-30 dollar increments.

            I had to intervene a few times. For instance, as smart as the models are said to be (Astra), it would copy the full training run, train on the server, pull every checkpoint to the local machine, then run tests, update. So, the bandwidth bill was as high as training bill for the first 6 hours. It could have simply tested each checkpoint on the server, saved time and money, didn't occur to it until I said.

        • varispeed16 minutes ago
          > I told it to use TPU only when training and bring it down afterwards.

          I wouldn't put my house on it. Brave.

        • 25 minutes ago
          undefined
        • shriphani35 minutes ago
          Neat!
    • PEe9bB7D41 minutes ago
      i also need more info!
      • GodelNumbering38 minutes ago
        I am thinking about opensourcing everything, although this is not my main domain or my main startup, so the overhead of huggingface etc seems a bit unnecessary
        • equinumerous4 minutes ago
          +1, would like to see. Even if it's not fully "ready for consumption", it's probably enough to reproduce the results.
        • jack_pp22 minutes ago
          just ask the agent to write it up if you don't have time to do a write-up yourself
  • netvarunan hour ago
    Off topic:With sol pricing drop tbh kimi k3’s value prop has not been that great. For our internal use case/testing/benchmarks sol come out with way better quality and much cheaper costs. Kimi really needs to drop their pricing (I heard it’s set by them across all the neoclouds) Sol is at 2/10 vs kimi’s 3/15
    • drob518an hour ago
      Agreed. Even on the open weight side, GLM 5.3 has roughly equivalent performance to Kimi K3 for less than half the cost.
    • pornel18 minutes ago
      Competition is good. Without K3/GLM/DS4 etc. there probably would be no reason for OpenAI to drop Sol's price.
    • nostreboredan hour ago
      Agreed, I think the only place where it’s still interesting is ui design. Visually kimi and muse feel much nicer than frontier models to me, but maybe it’s an artifact of everything terrible being Claude Design
  • jamienkan hour ago
    Ignoring for the moment issues of what "counts" as open, won't open models rapidly advance due to stuff like this in ways that it's less possible for the proprietary ones to do? This is exactly how Linux & Wikipedia, for example, overtook their "frontiers", right?
    • ssivark9 minutes ago
      [delayed]
    • andsoitisan hour ago
      > Ignoring for the moment issues of what "counts" as open, won't open models rapidly advance due to stuff like this in ways that it's less possible for the proprietary ones to do? This is exactly how Linux & Wikipedia, for example, overtook their "frontiers", right?

      I suspect the advantage that catapulted Linux ahead of the establishment was less technical potential and talent and more organizational advantage. That's not to diminish the technical talent of the Linux crew, but them being unencumbered gave them more degrees of freedom. The rest is history.

      So as long as the AI companies don't succumb to "big company" dynamics, they can outlead. To wit: Open AI and Anthropic are kicking Google's ass.

      • mirekrusin20 minutes ago
        I think people make mistake here, google’s approach is not to spend $2.3 on every $1.0 earned, they’re riding on serving to masses “luna”, they absolutely have way more powerful models internally but they don’t clutter their infrastructure with fragile and costly intelligence/size frontier. I think “underdog” perception is illusory/temporary, not stupidity, but calculated, conscious, longer term bet.
      • jamienkan hour ago
        Diff people have diff motives to experiment, then new work is done on top of stuff that "hits" in a way no one anticipated. Then work gets piled on top in a way that might make it hard to port
        • andsoitisan hour ago
          > then new work is done on top of stuff that "hits" in a way no one anticipated.

          Indeed. And when you have freedom to play, you are able to find new stepping stones that you didn't anticipate. And you can combine stepping stones in new ways to make new discoveries.

          Greatness cannot be planned.

    • segmondyan hour ago
      No, because close labs/models borrow but don't contribute back.
    • swagatkonchadaan hour ago
      Won't the "frontier" labs figure out whatever techniques were used and apply them to their closed models?
      • cyanydeez42 minutes ago
        Like how the last 2 decades of tech companies are thinly veiled open source pilfering into business units.
      • k__an hour ago
        If they can keep up.

        The lock-in is less pronounced as it is with AWS or MS.

    • zeroqan hour ago
      The difference between contributing to OS and AI, is that the first is a hobby alternative to woodworking or hiking, while the other can easily bootstrap you a company you can get millions in investment, at least for time being.
    • intothemildan hour ago
      Yes, absolutely, but only if people keep contributing in the open.
      • jack_ppan hour ago
        not necessarily, just knowing something is possible will motivate others to achieve it somehow. Which is why there are so many LLMs and OAI doesn't have a monopoly
  • nicoan hour ago
    > The problem: thinking models think too much

    This is partly the appeal of Jev et al; having a quick model for simple tasks, that doesn’t require that much thinking

    It’s amazing all the workflows that models like that can unlock. And yes, classifiers and other ML models have been around for a while for these types of tasks, but Jev has made it easy and cheap to play and experiment. This in turn, is incentivizing people to try them for a bunch of stuff, unlocking creativity and producing a lot of new cool (and eventually potentially very useful) applications

    • demibabsan hour ago
      What are the useful applications of Jev so far? Not to sound dismissive, I just haven’t seen what people are using it for yet.
      • neosatan hour ago
        Lots of use cases! I've personally used it for the following:

        1. Evals (once you have your rubric defined and tuned using a reasoning model, jev can be great for running periodic evals especially those that run daily.

        2. e-commerce catalog classification 3. quick search using anything as context and query mapping to a pre-defined set.

    • elcomet38 minutes ago
      Why not using a cheap LLM with thinking completely disabled ? I don't think it will be much more expensive than jev.
      • ssivark2 minutes ago
        [delayed]
      • nico25 minutes ago
        I’ve tested this with some local LLMs and their accuracy is in general better than Jev/Laya, but they are super slow in comparison as well

        For example, a typical/stock LLM can’t really play Doom in real time, but a Jev-like model can. Just because of latency

        Of course, if you want the best Doom player, there are way better and faster adhoc models

  • Arcuru24 minutes ago
    Over on /r/LocalLLaMA there's a group that's been getting popular doing the same thing for the Qwen 27B (and other) models. - https://huggingface.co/ukisai
  • andsoitis2 hours ago
    > The problem: thinking models think too much

    Analysis paralysis stifles not just human intelligence, but other intelligences too.

    • minimaxir22 minutes ago
      The thinking traces on some Chinese models just output the full response in the thinking trace, then output it again to the user, which is redundant.
    • AraneaDev30 minutes ago
      Yes and thar makes you wonder if the Paradox of Choice would apply as well ;)

      The more options you have, the harder it becomes to be satisfied with the one you picked.

  • intothemildan hour ago
    So they trained a model on open weights, and then aren't releasing the weights... am I reading this right?
    • netvarunan hour ago
      Technically kimi k-3 weights license is not open weight (it has a lot of restrictions). I would classify it as ‘weight open’ similar to the bsl and fsl ’source open’ licenses.
      • Evidloan hour ago
        weight available
    • DonsDiscountGasan hour ago
      It happens. Most open licenses aren't GPL style copyleft.
    • kingstnapan hour ago
      There is little to no point reading the article as well. It's stripped of all alpha.

      > task and environment feedback

      > on-policy planning and learning

      > feedback connects decisions to their consequences

      These are deliberately the least informative phrases you could possibly use to describe what you have done, while still being in the realm of words that go over a generic investor who has no idea whats going on and may be dazzled by sciencey sounding language.

      Cursor compose 2.5 article where they used and described on policy self distilation was actual alpha.

    • makeramenan hour ago
      Aren't Cursor Composer models like this too? At some point all the extra RL you do can be considered as proprietary information added.

      Not suggesting this is right or wrong, but is sort of the nature of the technology.

      • 41 minutes ago
        undefined
    • swagatkonchadaan hour ago
      It happens with open source software all the time, why would we expect any different with open source weights.
      • reactordevan hour ago
        Because we do. The GPL isn't a suggestion. If you can take open source code and make private software out of it then what are we all doing? No, license requirements and agreement are law for a reason.
      • otterley30 minutes ago
        Because the licenses that apply to software make no sense in the context of LLMs. With the latter, there is no source code to license.

        The words of a license are what the license is.

    • an hour ago
      undefined
  • riquito8 minutes ago
    Aside. I find the "cost per task" charts both useful and uncanny. Is It better a model that takes me to 90% in 1 dollar or one that takes me to 95% in 2 dollars? Or a different model that too scores 90% in 1 dollar? How much will it cost me the last 10% or 5%? At the end of the day, cost to 100% is what matters and the half (90%) backed solution may require more to reach 100% (or not, who knows?)
  • tomrodan hour ago
    Well done, and great iteration.

    The pareto frontier needs clearer distinction. Benchmarks miss half the story. What, if any, capability is lost by the token reduction (for example, was it like super awesome at Golang before and now kind of sucks? that kind of distinction).

    • drob518an hour ago
      Unfortunately, it’s hard to make a chart of that.
  • erichoceanan hour ago
    Need this done for DeepSeek, ideally one of the Flash models.
    • drob518an hour ago
      And GLM. Both Deepseek 4.1 Flash and GLM 5.3 Flash are quote verbose when thinking.
    • atemerevan hour ago
      If you have the compute, I have the expertise.
  • tdhz77an hour ago
    Does anybody know if this would be a good model for creative writing?
    • combobyte15 minutes ago
      > model

      > creative

      Choose one.

  • dbuxtonan hour ago
    Do they mean Opus 5.5 or Opus 5?
  • themgtan hour ago
    The result? Ember-1 set a new Pareto frontier for Bedside Bench across both open and closed models including GPT-5.6 Sol, GPT-6 Astra, and Claude Opus 5 on cost/task.

    "Pareto": 8 hits

    "Opus 5.5": zero hits

    • wmfan hour ago
      Obviously this research was done before 6.0 Sol and Opus 5.5 came out. Your point stands that the frontier moves quickly and small gains can be eclipsed quickly.
  • ls612an hour ago
    On the smaller end, Quen 3.8, while being extraordinarily capable for a small local model, also suffers from extreme thinking. I wonder if the techniques described here generalize to other models too.
  • monkey_monkey2 hours ago
    I don't think the article mentions Pareto frontier enough.

    Also, did I miss a memo? Suddenly every article on AI seems to be talking about the Pareto frontier - or have I just not been paying attention?

    • user43928an hour ago
      Pareto frontier on some benchmark that I am hearing of for the first time.

      Kimi K3 with less reasoning tokens isn't exactly exciting either, and particularly so if the license is less open than original Kimi K3.

    • AnodicElegyan hour ago
      I guess they figure "best bang for your buck" comes off a little too colloquial.
    • DonsDiscountGasan hour ago
      They want it to be the best at something. And it's obviously not the absolute smartest. So here we are.
  • logicalleean hour ago
    This is really interesting. I think the Fireworks Serverless Training infrastructure they used to develop it is also unique and needed. Except if someone works at one of a handful of the largest labs, it is very difficult to set up or try any sort of training pipeline. The managed training infrastructure makes it available to more people.
    • nostreboredan hour ago
      I can’t help but think it’s more expensive tinker.
  • esafakan hour ago
    It looks like it would be similar to GLM 5.3 Flash, had they tested it...
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