Apple Silicon, especially an M1 Max Studio seems to be an interesting machine to hang on to as the models become more and more efficient with using less and less.
If there's nay other opinions or thoughts on this, I'd be very happy to learn as well. I have considered the eGPU route connected to a 1L PC such as a thinkcentre m80/90.
I have a 64 GB M1 Max MBP, and I'd say unless you really have some academic interest towards messing with open models, for now accessing SOTA models via a REST API has better latency for a given quality.
Claude 1.2 instant is as fast as 3.5, follows instructions at a quality closer to 4, and has a 100k context window. Hard to compete with that with an open source model right now.
How does open source compete with the Claude API? Easy: actually let you use the model. From the signup page:
> Anthropic is rolling out Claude slowly and incrementally, as we work to ensure the safety and scalability of it, in alignment with our company values.
> We're working with select partners to roll out Claude in their products. If you're interested in becoming one of those partners, we are accepting applications. Keep in mind that, due to the overwhelming interest we've received so far, we may take a while to reply.
No thanks, I'd much rather not wait months to see if my app deserves their oh-so-limited attention, or "aligns with the values" of a company taking $400m from Sam Bankman-Fried.
To be more charitable to your underlying point, Claude 2 is free to chat with via Anthropic's website, Poe, or Slack, and the GPT-4 API is open to use. If you're building a prototype or just need a chatbot, these do have better results and dev experience, at least for now. But I don't think picking on your Claude API example is unfair. These companies could randomly refuse your prompts via some opaque "moderation API" (that all GPT fine-tuning data goes through!), train on your company's proprietary data, spy on your most intimate questions, or just not find you worth the trouble and cut you off, at any time. THAT is why open source beats proprietary hands down: My device, my data, my weights, my own business.
Awkward tie-ins between SBF and value systems (?) have no effect on practical usage.
A theoretical concern they might train on my API data after saying they won't doesn't either. Amazon might be training on everything not bolted down in S3, not worth wasting brain power on that.
The moderation API isn't some magic gotcha, it's documented. They don't want to deal with people fine tuning for porn. Maybe you have some ideological disagreement on that but it's not of practical relevance when trying to write code.
At the end of the day you're not alone in these opinions. But some of us prefer pragmatism over hype. Until someone catches OpenAI or Anthropic trying to kill their golden goose by breaking their GDPR, HIPPA, and SOC2 certifications, I'm going to take delivered value over theoretical harm.
If there's nay other opinions or thoughts on this, I'd be very happy to learn as well. I have considered the eGPU route connected to a 1L PC such as a thinkcentre m80/90.