Open Source AI Gains Favor as Mixtral 8x7B Tops Chatbot Arena

An ongoing survey, encompassing over 100,000 participants, reveals a preference for open-source AI tools over proprietary commercial alternatives among artificial intelligence enthusiasts.

Mixtral 8x7B Impact:

Mistral AI's Mixtral 8x7B, an open-source model, has made waves in the AI landscape, earning recognition as one of the Best Large Language Models (LLMs) of 2023 by Decrypt. Its light yet powerful design has garnered attention, particularly for its outstanding performance in benchmark tests, notably excelling in the Chatbot Arena.

Chatbot Arena's Unique Approach:

Chatbot Arena, relying on over 130,000 user votes, computes Elo ratings for AI models. In a departure from conventional standardization methods, it adopts a "human" approach, asking users to blindly choose between two replies from unidentified LLMs. This unconventional method has spotlighted Mixtral's prowess, surpassing industry giants like Anthropíc's Claude 2.1 and OpenAI's GPT-3.5.

Chatbot Arena’s ranking. Mistral AI’s LLM ranks 6 in the list. Image: Huggingface

Mixtral's Distinction:

Mixtral stands out as the only open-source LLM in Chatbot Arena's top 10, indicating a noteworthy shift towards accessible and community-driven AI models. Mistral AI asserts that Mixtral outperforms competitors like LlaMA 2 70B, offering faster inference and matching or surpassing GPT-3.5 on standard benchmarks.

Architectural Advantage:

Mixtral's success is attributed to its 'Mixture of Experts' (MoE) architecture. This technique utilizes virtual expert models, each specializing in a specific topic. The router network selects the most relevant experts for efficient and accurate processing, controlling cost and latency.

Multilingual Proficiency:

Mixtral's excellence extends to multilingual capabilities, excelling in languages such as French, German, Spanish, Italian, and English. Under the Apache 2.0 license, its open-source nature empowers developers to explore, modify, and enhance the model collaboratively.

Significance for Open Source AI:

Mixtral's success signifies a triumph for the open-source AI community. Beyond technological prowess, it heralds a future where resonance with users becomes a decisive factor, transcending considerations of model parameters and capabilities.