Mira Murati’s 975B Inkling Doesn’t Beat GPT or Claude. That’s the Point.

Editor's take

Thinking Machines has released a large language model, 975B Inkling, under the permissive Apache 2.0 license, prioritizing accessibility over benchmark performance.

This move is significant because it directly challenges the trend of proprietary, closed-source models like OpenAI's GPT-4 and Anthropic's Claude 3 Opus dominating the LLM landscape. By making a powerful model openly available, Thinking Machines empowers researchers and developers who may lack the resources for massive proprietary systems, fostering a more collaborative and potentially faster innovation cycle across the AI ecosystem.

Future developments to monitor include whether other major players will follow suit with similarly capable open-source releases, and how Inkling's performance evolves in practical, real-world applications beyond standardized benchmarks. The true impact will be seen in the diversity of applications and the speed of improvements driven by the wider community.