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How large are large language models?

(gist.github.com)
262 points rain1 | 1 comments | 02 Jul 25 10:39 UTC | HN request time: 0.411s | source
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ljoshua ◴[02 Jul 25 13:00 UTC] No.44443222[source]▶
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.
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1. tasuki ◴[02 Jul 25 20:15 UTC] No.44448315[source]▶
8.1 GB is a lot!

It is 64,800,000,000 bits.

I can imagine 100 bits sure. And 1,000 bits why not. 10,000 you lose me. A million? That sounds like a lot. Now 64 million would be a number I can't well imagine. And this is a thousand times 64 million!