NLP & Language · intermediate · concept 130 of 311 · Updated Nov 4, 2026
Open-Weights & Small Language Models
Models whose weights you can download, run, and tune yourself: the Llama, Qwen, DeepSeek, and Mistral lines. Small language models in the 1B to 14B range now do real work on laptops and phones. The open-versus-closed gap keeps narrowing, and pricing power follows it.
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Top AI contributors on this
- Dario AmodeiAnthropic
- Sam AltmanOpenAI
- Jeff DeanDiscovery Loop
- Noam ShazeerOpenAI
- Alec RadfordIndependent / Thinking Machines Lab (adviser)
- Oriol VinyalsDiscovery Loop
Key terms
Open weights vs open sourceSLMLocal inferenceModel licensesDistilled models
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Where you meet it in the real world
On-device assistants, data-sovereign deployments, edge inference, fine-tuned vertical models
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▶ Large Language Models explained briefly ↗
3Blue1Brown · YouTube
▶ Should You Use Open Source Large Language Models? ↗
IBM Technology · YouTube
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