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Comment by dofm | Hacker News Reader

> We are at the mercy of frontier labs for access to SOTA LLMs

I disagree with this use of SOTA, and this topic is why.

Anthropic and OpenAI have “cutting-edge” models. These are beyond the state of the art but they are closed, secretive, hard to quantify.

The “state of the art” is open source, open weights models that can be inspected, studied, shared and critiqued, because that is what is meant by “the art” —- it is the knowledge and principles and evidence and materials available to all. The “state of the art” is the highest point of that.

I wish we could make this distinction and stop blessing two secretive, unverifiable loss-making companies with so much power.

(Putting that aside, I suspect — without evidence, mind you - that the endless march to solving models by making them bigger is not the solution anyway.)

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SOTA LLMs is less important than cheap token and Chinese AI labs is releasing model that is only about 6-8 months behind American AI labs.

Chinese's model like GLM is getting better for coding task and its cheaper. Microsoft Github copilot have to switch billing to token based. the cost of AI have increased since agent come into play. whoever can offer cheaper token to do task will win.

even Microsoft is looking into Deepseek for cheap token.

https://www.axios.com/2026/06/16/microsoft-copilot-cowork-to...

Sorry but I think you’re requirement that something only be “the art” if any arbitrary person can critique it is off. The frontier labs are working on the state of the art but it’s just art that you aren’t allowed to see. Unfortunately.

It is work using the principles of the art, obviously.

But "state of the art" implies the highest state of general availability, not just in terms of access to some product, but of use of the ideas, concepts, methodologies etc.

Anthropic and OpenAI have "cutting edge" models; the state of the art is behind the cutting edge.

The state of the art is the best open source, open weights model available. More or less by definition.

I am probably tilting at windmills here.

That's an interesting and possibly useful distinction , but it seems unique to you. Spreading it as "We should categorize the AIs this way" would be a good argument.

But the way SOTA is generally understood by other users of the language, it refers to exactly the team, technology, & techniques defining the cutting edge in any field, regardless of the whether the technology & techniques are available outside of that team...

Not so much, it turns out.

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/239963/do-state-...

The Stack Exchange poster seems to be confusing "State Of The Art" with "Best Practices".

Meanwhile, Wikipedia specifically calls out "Cutting Edge" as specifically synonymous with "SOTA" [0], Cambridge defines it as "the best and most modern of its type" with zero reference to general vs limited availability in the definition or any of it's numerous examples [1], and the same from Merriam-Webster [2].

Having studied and worked in multiple technology fields ranging from software to mechanical & aero engineering for four+ decades, your post is literally the first time I've ever seen anyone even try to make such a distinction between SOTA vs CE. I think it could be a very useful distinction if it were to get into common usage, but IME it is far closer to unique than common. The sibling comments to your assertions show pretty much the same thing - it would be useful, but it isn't common.

Promote it as common and you'll find pushback. Promote it as novel and useful, and it'll likely spread.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_the_art

[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/state-of...

[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/state%20of%20the%...

I appreciate this distinction. The are multiple senses of SOTA and one that has been taking on greater mindshare is as a synonym of “the best available”. By rebasing on SOTA as generally available and understood versus cutting edge, which has limited distribution and leads the way, we expand the vocabulary we have available to describe what’s going on. Thanks.

the art is the standard engineering practices that go into building the thing

its things you would be trained in as part of a bachelor's degree and some graduate coursework

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