Okay, so I’ve been messing around with these large language models, you know, trying to see what they can really do. I heard some buzz about Google’s Gemma and, of course, Meta’s Llama, and I wanted to do a little head-to-head, especially since there’s a new 9B Gemma floating around.
Getting Started
First things first, I needed to get my hands on these models. Getting access wasn’t too hard. I’m no coding genius, just your regular guy, I find the right tutorials, fiddle around a bit, and boom, I’m in.
I’ve been using this simple setup on my own machine. Nothing fancy, just enough to run these things and see what happens. No cloud stuff, just keeping it local.
I grabbed the models and made sure I had the right libraries, I think it was mainly transformers, to get them running.
The Experiment
So, the big question: how do these things actually feel different when you’re using them? I didn’t want to get into any super technical benchmarks. I just wanted to throw some real-world questions at them and see what came back.
I started with some basic stuff, like:
- “Write me a short story about a cat who thinks he’s a dog.”
- “Explain the theory of relativity like I’m five years old.”
- “Give me some ideas for a weekend trip near me.”
My Observations (Totally Unscientific, Just My Opinion)
Here’s the thing: both models are pretty impressive. They both spit out text that, most of the time, makes sense. But there were some differences I noticed:
Gemma 9B: Felt a little… sharper? Like, the responses were sometimes a bit more concise and to the point. I wouldn’t say it’s “smarter,” but it felt like it got to the core of the question faster, sometimes. Sometimes, it felt a little less “chatty”.
Meta’s Model (I used the v2): This one felt a bit more… I don’t know, conversational? Like, it would sometimes give you a bit more background, a bit more explanation, even if you didn’t exactly ask for it. That’s not bad, just different. It was pretty good at generating creative stuff, like the cat story. Also, the formating sometimes came with bullet points, which was good.
The Little Annoyances
It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes, both models would just… go off the rails. You’d get a response that was completely unrelated, or it would just repeat itself over and over. Happens. It’s like they have a little brain fart. I find that changing the question a bit, trying different words, to get them to understand what i was trying to do was the way.
Wrapping It Up
Honestly, I’m not sure I can say one is definitively “better” than the other. They both have their quirks. I think it really depends on what you’re trying to do. For quick, to-the-point answers, I might lean towards Gemma 9B right now. For more creative stuff, or if I want a more conversational feel, I might go with Meta’s model. The formatting was also something I preffered with the Meta’s model.
The big takeaway for me? This stuff is evolving fast. It’s going to be really interesting to see where these models are in even a few months. I’m definitely going to keep playing around with them! I’m gonna try to put them to help me with daily tasks, I don’t know yet how, but I’m sure i’ll find something.