“Smaug-72B outperforms GPT-3.5 and Mistral Medium, two of the most advanced proprietary large language models developed by OpenAI and Mistral, respectively, in several of the most popular benchmarks.”
A new French national strategy for AI development bets on #opensourceAI and “national champions” like recently founded Mistral.AI - good coverage in Politico.
The piece also highlights the ongoing #AIAct policy debate on regulating foundation models, including ones that are open-source (something that we have been working on at @openfuture . Depending on how the regulation will ultimately look, it will either create a supportive policy environment - so that open-source becomes Europe’s preferred approach to AI development; or it will stifle open-source development.
Background reading: this op-ed from June, arguing for a “national sovereign #AI program" that includes 1) open training data, 2) explainable algorithms and 3) permissive licensing of models.
It’s interesting to see France, together with French companies that aim to become “national AI champions”, bet on #opensourceAI - at a time when the US AI Big Tech companies are to various degrees opposed / reluctant to share LLMs (with the exception of Meta, although it’s take on open sourcing models is controversial).