Gemini, O1, Grok, Claude, Llama, Yi, and Mistral: The number of large language models (LLMs) seems to have grown exponentially since OpenAI’s ChatGPT burst into the public consciousness in late 2022. It’s estimated that $154 billion was spent on AI by businesses in 2023, while the most recent McKinsey global survey on AI reveals that up to 65% of firms were regularly using generative AI (gen AI) in their operations. But beyond the hype and billion-dollar figures, it’s still a little unclear where and how the technology is really being used.

Our research aimed to go beyond surveys of business managers and included real-world data on how AI is being adopted. To achieve this, we went to the source to analyze the activities of software developers and how they were interacting with some of the leading open-weight LLMs. These are freely available LLMs that can be accessed, modified, and redistributed with minimal restrictions. 

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