Open models in perpetual catch-up

Every 4-6 months a new open-weights model comes out that causes a clamor of discussion on how open models are closer than they ever have been to the best closed, frontier models. The most recent is Z.ai’s GLM 5 model, which is the latest, leading open weights model from a Chinese company. In the last 12 months the new part of this story is that all of the open models of discussion are coming from China, where previously they were almost always Meta’s Llamas. These moments of discussion are alway...