To be clear (sorry if you already understood this from the post): Running BLOOM via an API that someone else created is easy. My claim is that someone needs significant expertise to be able to run their own instance of BLOOM. I think the hardest part is setting up multiple GPUs to run the 176B parameter model. But looking back, I might have underestimated how straightforward it is to get the open-source code to run BLOOM working. Maybe it’s basically plug-and-play as long as you get an appropriate A100 GPU instance on the cloud. I did not attempt to run BLOOM from scratch myself.
I recall that in an earlier draft, my estimate for how many people know how to independently run BLOOM was higher (indicating that it’s easier). I got push-back on that from someone who works at an AI lab (though this person wasn’t an ML practitioner themselves). I thought they made a valid point but I didn’t think carefully about whether they were actually right in this case. So I decreased my estimate in response to their feedback.
To be clear (sorry if you already understood this from the post): Running BLOOM via an API that someone else created is easy. My claim is that someone needs significant expertise to be able to run their own instance of BLOOM. I think the hardest part is setting up multiple GPUs to run the 176B parameter model. But looking back, I might have underestimated how straightforward it is to get the open-source code to run BLOOM working. Maybe it’s basically plug-and-play as long as you get an appropriate A100 GPU instance on the cloud. I did not attempt to run BLOOM from scratch myself.
I recall that in an earlier draft, my estimate for how many people know how to independently run BLOOM was higher (indicating that it’s easier). I got push-back on that from someone who works at an AI lab (though this person wasn’t an ML practitioner themselves). I thought they made a valid point but I didn’t think carefully about whether they were actually right in this case. So I decreased my estimate in response to their feedback.