Simon Willison’s Weblog

Basically, a frontier model like OpenAI’s O1 is like a Ferrari SF-23. It’s an obvious triumph of engineering, designed to win races, and that’s why we talk about it. But it takes a special pit crew just to change the tires and you can’t buy one for yourself. In contrast, a BERT model is like a Honda Civic. It’s also an engineering triumph, but more subtly, since it is engineered to be affordable, fuel-efficient, reliable, and extremely useful. And that’s why they’re absolutely everywhere.

— Alexis Gallagher