Rising compute barriers: Researchers complain reviewers demand evals on larger models

chhaviyadav_ · x · 2026-07-26

A researcher reminisced about getting into ICLR with 12-hour experiments on a GTX 1060, complaining that arXiv and top conferences are increasingly gatekeeping newcomers.

Another highlighted that academia has moved past 8B models, noting that reviewers now explicitly demand evaluations and fine-tuning on larger, advanced open-source models like the 21B GPT-OSS. This sparked a discussion on which open models are currently feasible for academic papers.

Related event: Top Conference Reviewers Criticized for Raising Compute Barriers Against Small Teams(5 posts)→

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