SLMs also sharpen customization. These models can be finely tuned for specific tasks and industry domains, yielding specialized applications that produce measurable business outcomes. Whether in customer support, financial analysis, or healthcare diagnostics, these leaner models prove their effectiveness.
The open source advantage
The open source community has been a driving force behind the advancement and adoption of SLMs. Meta’s new iteration, Llama 3.1, offers a range of sizes that deliver robust capabilities without excessive resource demands. Other models, such as Stanford’s Alpaca and Stability AI’s StableLM, demonstrate that the performance of smaller models rivals or surpasses that of their larger counterparts, especially in domain-specific applications.
Cloud platforms and tools from Hugging Face, IBM’s Watsonx.ai, and others are making these models more accessible and reducing entry barriers for enterprises of all sizes. This democratization of AI capabilities is a game-changer. More organizations can incorporate advanced AI without relying on proprietary, often prohibitively expensive solutions.