Ethan Mollick: data-sovereignty small models struggle to keep up with frontier AI

emollick · x · 2026-09-14

Ethan Mollick argues the enterprise data-sovereignty movement will hit a hard reality: as long as AI capability growth stays exponential, keeping fine-tuned small models continually beating larger general-purpose models is expensive and difficult. He cites a 2026 scenario where GPT-6 Astra runs multi-state research projects while a law firm spends heavily fine-tuning NVIDIA Nemotron 3. Fine-tuned models can create competitive advantage, he adds, but they complement frontier models rather than replace them across most domains.

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