Recursive releases Flint, a free laptop coding model it says was built largely by its automated research system
The startup says its Eureka Machine helped with nearly every development step, so a small team could build the model in under four months.
Recursive, an AI startup founded last year, released its first model, Flint, on Wednesday. Flint is a free coding model small enough to run on a laptop, and it is available on Hugging Face under the Apache 2.0 license. The company says its automated research system, the Eureka Machine, helped with nearly every step of Flint's development, which let a small team build the model from scratch in under four months. Because Flint runs on the user's own computer, developers can use it offline, keep their code private and avoid the per-token fees that cloud AI services charge. TechCrunch describes the release as an early public test of recursive self-improvement, the much-debated idea that AI systems can build better AI systems. Some researchers worry that this process could slip out of human control. Recursive's version is more limited: an AI research assistant that people oversee. The company came out of stealth in May with $650 million in funding at a $4.65 billion valuation, from backers including GV, Nvidia and AMD Ventures. It is led by CEO Richard Socher, formerly Salesforce's chief scientist.