On: Rio de Janeiro's "homegrown" LLM appears to be a merge of an existing model

[thimabi]

I wouldn’t describe what happened here as incompetence. As a “carioca”, I am pleasantly surprised to know that the government’s IT department is involved in AI work — even without the budget to create its own models from scratch.

[antonvs → thimabi]

They could do AI work without trying to lie to the entire rest of the world.

[arcticfox → thimabi]

This seems kind of insane though, every time I go to Rio I think of the potential of AI/technology to solve some problems and leave it even more paradisiacal... But working on their own model? Wtf? There are a million applications of existing ones there that should be followed up on instead.

[reese_john → thimabi]

It is a testament to the bloat and overreach of the Brazilian state in the economy. Such endeavors should be left to the private sector

[thimabi → reese_john]

I disagree. I’d prefer if my government invested more in AI solutions, so as not to depend so much on foreign technology.

In an ideal world, Brazil would have a thriving private sector, capable of competing even in the AI sector. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, and I believe that without government action such endeavors won’t really succeed.