The 18-month gap between frontier and open-source AI models has shrunk to 6 months - what this means

Here’s something that might surprise you — the gap between top-tier AI models and open-source ones has shrunk from 18 months to just six. This past week, /u/hungry-for-things ran a real-world test comparing Gemma 3 12B against paid frontier models across actual business tasks. The verdict? About 90% of the time, there’s no real difference. Only around 5% of tasks actually benefit from the paid models, and another 5% still aren’t quite there. So what does this mean? Well, according to /u/hungry-for-things, open models are catching up fast because the focus is shifting — from relying on a single massive model to developing specialized, local ones that fit specific needs. Plus, as Faisal Al Khunizan notes in a LinkedIn post, even artificial general intelligence — AGI — will probably be open-sourced someday. And here’s the thing — it's less about the model quality, and more about the infrastructure that supports it. The future’s looking more accessible than ever.