smaller models

also referred to as: smaller model

6 statements across 6 episodes · 4 bullish · 1 bearish · 6 people on the record · first statement Apr 27, 2024 by Joscha Bach · across every show →

Everything said about smaller models, oldest first

Apr 27, 2024 bullish
Prediction Held up
Bach: Smaller, more powerful models will ensure unconstrained AI remains accessible
“Yes, but there will also be better jailbroken models or models that have never been jailed before, because we find out how to make smaller models that are more powerful.”
Joscha Bach Apr 27, 2024 ▶ 1:28:21 This World Does Not Exist — Joscha Bach, Karan Malhotra, Rob Haisfield (WorldSim, WebSim, Liquid AI)
Sep 19, 2024 positive
Assertion Supported
Jamil: Smaller models gain more improvement from Writing in the Margins
“As you can see, for example smaller models have a better more more improvement.”
Umar Jamil Sep 19, 2024 ▶ 14:20 [Paper Club] Writing in the Margins: Chunked Prefill KV Caching for Long Context Retrieval
Jul 2, 2025 negative
Opinion
Morris: Two years of academic AI research on small models was inconsequential
“There was like kind of two years where everyone in academia was working on like smaller models and none of it really mattered.”
Jack Morris Jul 2, 2025 ▶ 8:36 Information Theory for Language Models: Jack Morris
Aug 29, 2025 positive
Insight
Morcos: Test-time compute fundamentally favors smaller models to cut multi-step inference costs
“Test time compute as a paradigm really pushes you towards smaller models, right? Because if your cost of solving a problem is cost of inference times number of thinking steps, and you have to do a lot of thinking steps. Well, now this is like a really like min…”
Ari Morcos Aug 29, 2025 ▶ 1:04:35 Better Data is All You Need — Ari Morcos, Datology
Feb 12, 2026
Insight
Jeff Dean: Capable small models require first building frontier models
“Through distillation, which is a key technique for making the smaller models more capable, you know, you have to have the frontier model in order to then distill it into your smaller model. So it's not like an either or choice. You sort of need that in order t…”
Jeff Dean Feb 12, 2026 ▶ 3:06 The AI Frontier: from Gemini 3 Deep Think distilling to Flash — Jeff Dean
Jul 22, 2026 bullish
Insight
Kant: Industry will squeeze far more capability from smaller models via behavior
“We are going to be able to squeeze so much more out of smaller models than I think we had imagined in the industry. Because yes, there's intelligence and larger models are more intelligent. Like no doubt about it. We should continue to scale up. But the behavi…”
Eiso Kant Jul 22, 2026 ▶ 39:56 The AI Frontier: from open weights to open research — Eiso Kant, Poolside AI
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