For technical work on the LLM paradigm, it’s a huge problem that most of the interesting (or concerning) behaviors don’t exist in small models. It’s probably possible to make progress on frontier model problems without access to one, but it’s definitely hard-mode.
Add to that that the big labs don’t publish everything (or publish with delays), and now you have to worry that even if you do find something potentially relevant, there’s a good chance it’s not novel.
For technical work on the LLM paradigm, it’s a huge problem that most of the interesting (or concerning) behaviors don’t exist in small models. It’s probably possible to make progress on frontier model problems without access to one, but it’s definitely hard-mode.
Add to that that the big labs don’t publish everything (or publish with delays), and now you have to worry that even if you do find something potentially relevant, there’s a good chance it’s not novel.