Open AI models now trail US leaders by 4 months, Mozilla finds
A new Mozilla report says the best open-source AI models from China now perform nearly as well as leading closed US models—just a 4.4-month lag on complex tasks, and at about 30% the cost. Most organizations can use open models for routine work and reserve expensive proprietary models for specialized needs. The performance gap has narrowed rapidly in recent months.
- Open models now lag by just 4.4 months on task-horizon tests
- Top open model is 3 points behind best closed model on standard index
- Open models cost about 30% as much as frontier US models
- DoorDash uses open models for routine, closed for expert tasks
- Mozilla expects open models as new default for most organizations
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