I‘ve recently learnt that ETH is developping a LLM that can be used in more than 1‘000 languages, so to me this sounds like ChatGPT but on steroids. And it will be open source and come from a reputable public institution, so I can imagine that all the data protection stuff is loads better too.
It should be launched in a few weeks. How is this not more discussed in the public? Or am I just overestimating the possibilities of this thing? It sounds like a huge chance to bring some tech-influence back to Europe. (https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2025/07/a-language-model-built-for-the-public-good.html)

by Tombohniha

16 comments

  1. Well i guess there is not yet much fuzz about it is because it’s not out yet and we can’t test how good it really is.

    1000 languages does not impress me. real tests from others then the developers / publishers are interesting and will show how good it really is.

  3. There is no large technical Innovation. If the model were good, they would publish benchmark, but now it’s just a repeat of what companies did years ago, but with only legally and ethically obtained data. (Which makes the model quality worse)

    The model will be years behind of gpt5, grok4 or Claude4.1. the only Innovation would be that you can use it where one couldn’t because of data protection stuff

  4. Showoff and marketing.
    Let them first release the model.

    Did Deepseek announced before releasing the model? . I didn‘t expected this from ETH. First, release the model and then do the marketing.

  5. I have heard it is 1000000 languages and to me it sounds like it is the second coming of Christ, why is this not on national news?

    (Same argument exaggerated for effect) What questions (expletives work too) would you have if I said that? That is your answer.

  6. Because the 1’000 languages thing doesn’t really matter. It’s all about reasoning and problem solving.

    Mistral is already open source and european.

  7. Model quality is largely dependent on how much cash someone is will to throw at the problem.

    ETH has less resources than BigTech so the model quality will surely be worse than existing models

  8. imo, “ai-news” is saturated and I would argue many are over-stimulated, hearing “amazing” things A.I. can do nonstop – hence the silence. I may go out on a limb here but most people don’t harness basic LLM abilities – using it to “google” yes/no questions.

    I looked it up and it sounds interesting. I will definitely try it out once it is out and see if I can throw it into my LLM army. For what it’s worth, yes, I think we ought to wait and see. No need to build hype around it. The way I see it, proficient users will find specific LLMs for specific tasks eventually and the eth-model might fit in somewhere.

  9. It will be discussed once the performances will be released and hopefully they will be good.
    That’s the main criteria to shine in the LLMs world.

  10. don’t know much about this project, I just read about it in the newspaper.
    But when it comes to AI models, the general rule is: quality over quantity.

    In most cases, it’s more effective to have a model trained on fewer languages with high-quality data, rather than trying to include everything in one large, inconsistent dataset.

    Also, since it’s open source, taxpayers are funding a model that can be used freely by anyone, including international competitors. Given the intense competition from the U.S., I’m not sure that’s the best strategy.

    Training a model that big can cost some millions.

    But that’s just my personal opinion.

  11. I think it doesn’t matter if it’s better than US options or not. What matters is that it’s sovereign. With time it would also get better.

    Looking forward.
    Swiss people and companies should support this initiative and stop paying for US services

  12. Well, benchmark it then we see. If it actually is competitive, the world will talk about it.

  13. There are already open source models from Mistral. Open Source models, and non-american models, are not talked about much because the Silicon Valley techno-oligarchs want to get rich(er) on the current AI hype cycle, and that goes through proprietary models from OpenAI, GAFAM and Anthropic.

  14. Well, there were GTP 1, 2, 3 before ChatGPT and the public didn’t give a damn. So yeah, it is completely expected.

  15. Give us a beta to play around with and benchmark. They won’t release it because it will do poorly. I look forward to getting the LLM when they deem it ready.

  16. There is already a ton of available stuff on ollama. Nothing really new, just one more.

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