How large are large language models?

Less a technical comment and more just a mind-blown comment, but I still can’t get over just how much data is compressed into and available in these downloadable models. Yesterday I was on a plane with no WiFi, but had gemma3:12b downloaded through Ollama. Was playing around with it and showing my kids, and we fired history questions at it, questions about recent video games, and some animal fact questions. It wasn’t perfect, but holy cow the breadth of information that is embedded in an 8.1 GB file is incredible! Lossy, sure, but a pretty amazing way of compressing all of human knowledge into something incredibly contained.

Intelligence is compression some say

Very much so!

The more and faster a “mind” can infer, the less it needs to store.

Think how much fewer facts a symbolic system that can perform calculus needs to store, vs. an algebraic, or just arithmetic system, to cover the same numerical problem solving space. Many orders of magnitude less.

The same goes for higher orders of reasoning. General or specific subject related.

And higher order reasoning vastly increases capabilities extending into new novel problem spaces.

I think model sizes may temporarily drop significantly, after every major architecture or training advance.

In the long run, “A circa 2025 maxed M3 Ultra Mac Studio is all you need!” (/h? /s? Time will tell.)