Former Ai2 researcher says open models made AI research impact tangible
brianryhuang · x · 2026-07-28
Former Ai2 researcher says open models made the ecosystem’s value tangible
In this quoted thread, the author reflects on training OLMo at Ai2 and says the impact of open models initially felt abstract: Twitter hype was visible, Hugging Face numbers went up, but the real effect was hard to feel directly. The clearest signal came when people used open checkpoints for actual research, especially interpretability work.
He later says joining Humans changed his view, making the value of open source feel concrete. His bottom line: a small number of companies should not be able to dictate the direction of the whole technology stack, and the rise of new AI labs would not have been possible without strong open models and open-source infrastructure.
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