
Ten years ago today, our CEO and founder, Jacob Cannell, published ["The Brain as a Universal Learning Machine"](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9Yc7Pp7szcjPgPsjf/the-brain-as-a-universal-learning-machine) on LessWrong.com.

Drawing from neuroscience, machine learning, and systems theory, he proposed that **the human brain is not a patchwork of specialized, genetically programmed modules, but a general-purpose learning system** – or, as he put it, "a biological implementation of a _Universal Learning Machine_."

In hindsight, the timing was notable. Cannell published the piece just as deep learning was moving from niche research to broader relevance in artificial intelligence (AI). In the decade since then, rapid progress in scalable, trainable, data-driven models has validated the idea that learning, not pre-engineered structure, is the key to building intelligent systems.

So on the tenth anniversary of its publication, we'd like to revisit the key ideas of the article, reflect on what's aged well, and look ahead at what's still unfolding.

We’d encourage you to read the full article on [Less Wrong](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9Yc7Pp7szcjPgPsjf/the-brain-as-a-universal-learning-machine).


A look at the brain as a universal learning machine, and how it can be used to learn about the world.

A Decade Later: Revisiting the Brain as a Universal Learning Machine


DeepSeek may be getting a [lot of hype](https://vast.ai/article/deepseek-r1-open-source-disruptor-or-overhyped-upstart) recently, but there's a new rival on the scene. Alibaba Cloud's Qwen series of AI models is setting a new standard for intelligence in the open-source world.

Earlier this year, Alibaba Cloud launched **Qwen 2.5-Max** – and it reportedly [outperforms](https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/alibaba-releases-ai-model-it-claims-surpasses-deepseek-v3-2025-01-29/) other foundation models like DeepSeek-V3, GPT-4o, and Llama-3.1-405B "almost across the board," according to the company. Not only that, but it also [powered](https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3298233/alibabas-qwen-powers-top-10-open-source-models-china-ai-know-how-goes-beyond-deepseek) the top 10 open-source LLMs on Hugging Face's rankings last month. All of the top-ranked models on the Open LLM Leaderboard were trained and developed on the updated open-source versions of Qwen.

So what is Qwen, and what can you do with it? Let's take a closer look\!

### Qwen 2.5: Advancements and Features

The Qwen model series includes Qwen (an LLM), Qwen-VL (a vision-language model), Qwen-Audio, Qwen-Coder, and Qwen-Math. The latest Qwen 2.5 models have been pre-trained on a large-scale dataset of up to 18 trillion tokens, resulting in a substantial knowledge base as well as much-improved capabilities in coding and math.

In terms of performance metrics, Qwen 2.5 is quite impressive. It [achieved](https://www.alibabacloud.com/en/solutions/generative-ai/qwen) a score of 85+ on the Massive Multitask Language Understanding (MMLU) benchmark, a HumanEval score of 85+ in coding, and a MATH benchmark score above 80\.

Beyond these core competencies, Qwen 2.5 has highly advanced abilities in following instructions and understanding and generating structured data. It can handle diverse system prompts, demonstrating an adaptability that's well suited for role-based interactions and condition-setting for chatbots.

The models can even interact with software on PCs and mobile devices. One user posted a video online [showing](https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/27/alibabas-qwen-team-releases-ai-models-that-can-control-pcs-and-phones/) Qwen 2.5-VL opening the Booking.com app for Android and booking a flight from Chongqing to Beijing\!

### Specialized Models in the Qwen Family

Each open-source model in the Qwen series is designed for a specific domain. The following are the main options in the Qwen 2.5 lineup:

-   **Qwen 2.5-VL** – This large vision-language model processes images, text, and bounding boxes to recognize and analyze content. It can read text in Chinese and English, compare visuals, create stories, solve math problems, and answer questions.

-   **Qwen 2.5-Audio** – Designed to process audio and text, this audio language model accepts a variety of audio formats (including speech, music, and natural sounds) and generates text responses.

-   **Qwen 2.5-Max** – Pre-trained on over 20 trillion tokens and post-trained with curated Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT), this high-performing Mixture-of-Expert (MoE) model has surpassed DeepSeek V3, Llama 3.1, and others in benchmarks like Arena-Hard, LiveBench, LiveCodeBench, and GPQA-Diamond.

-   **Qwen 2.5-Coder** – This coding model supports up to 128K tokens of context, covers 92 programming languages, and delivers competitive performance against larger language models in code generation, multi-language coding, completion, and repair.

-   **Qwen 2.5-Math** – Pre-trained and fine-tuned on synthesized data, this mathematical LLM supports English and Chinese queries and excels in Chain-of-Thought (CoT), Program-of-Thought (PoT), and Tool-Integrated Reasoning (TIR) while outperforming most 70B math models.

Furthermore, Qwen APIs enable users to develop generative AI applications for tasks like writing, image generation, and audio analysis, boosting efficiency and transforming the customer experience for businesses.

### Powering Qwen with Vast.ai

Given how competitive the Qwen models are with larger, more established AI systems – and the fact that they're open source – they offer an exciting opportunity for AI researchers, developers, and enthusiasts to experiment and innovate at minimal cost.

However, deploying the models on high-performance hardware is crucial for optimal performance. That's where Vast.ai comes in. Our platform makes this possible with **on-demand [RTX 5090 GPU](https://vast.ai/article/nvidia-geforce-rtx-5090-specs-everything-you-need-to-know) rental**, for instance, providing the power needed to run Qwen models efficiently without the overhead of expensive infrastructure.

With many other GPU options in our marketplace, you can choose the right balance of performance and cost for your specific needs. Get started with Vast today and experience the full potential of Qwen with high-performance GPUs at your fingertips\!


Alibaba Cloud’s Qwen 2.5 AI models outperform rivals like DeepSeek and GPT-4o, excelling in coding, math, and vision. Available open-source, powered by Vast.ai GPUs.

Alibaba's Qwen: An Open-Source AI Model that Surpasses DeepSeek?


The growth of AI is outpacing compute. Today, there's an unprecedented demand for computing power as interest in AI surges worldwide – and servers just can't keep up.

More advanced AI models require increasingly powerful hardware. **Without enough GPUs, these large-scale AI systems struggle to run, and also cannot improve.**

Even OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, has [admitted](https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/31/openai-ceo-sam-altman-says-lack-of-compute-is-delaying-the-companys-products/) that computing limitations are slowing down the company's ability to release new products. Microsoft's CFO, Amy Woods, [noted](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/events/FY-2025/earnings-fy-2025-q1) last year that demand for AI "continues to be higher" than their "available capacity."

If industry giants like OpenAI and Microsoft are feeling the strain, smaller organizations face even steeper challenges. Without deep pockets or dedicated data centers, they often have no choice but to explore other options.

With GPUs in short supply and demand skyrocketing, many companies are turning to a more flexible, scalable solution: **GPU-as-a-service, or GPUaaS**.

## What Is GPU-as-a-Service?

Simply put, **GPUaaS is a cloud-based solution that provides on-demand access to high-performance GPUs.** It fills a gap in the AI industry by enabling customers to rent the compute power they need, scaling up or down as their workloads demand.

Big cloud providers like AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure offer GPU instances, but GPUaaS goes further. Platforms like our own here at Vast.ai tap into a decentralized network of idle GPUs from data centers, enterprises, and even individuals, making high-performance compute more affordable and widely available.

As a result, GPUaaS addresses a critical need: namely, that **AI infrastructure must be scalable, cost-efficient, and accessible to everyone.**

## Why GPUaaS Is the Key to Scalable AI Infrastructure

AI adoption shows no sign of slowing down – and with it comes fluctuating and unpredictable demand for computing power at any given time. Traditional centralized infrastructure isn't well suited to this type of volatility.

Relying on centralized GPU resources often leads to wasted potential and frustrating roadblocks, such as:

-   **High upfront costs** for purchasing and maintaining GPUs.
-   **Underutilized hardware** during slow periods, resulting in inefficiency and wasted costs.
-   **Bottlenecks** when demand spikes, slowing down innovation and delaying results.
-   **Limited access** to GPUs due to supply chain slowdowns and shortages, impacting AI scalability.

This is where GPU-as-a-Service offers a smarter solution. With GPUaaS, you can:

-   **Quickly scale AI workloads** to match demand without over-provisioning.
-   **Reduce costs** with a flexible pay-as-you-go model while eliminating the risks of heavy upfront investment.
-   **Access worldwide GPU resources**, minimizing latency and enhancing performance.
-   **Decrease energy consumption** by leveraging existing, idle GPUs instead of powering additional servers.

## GPUaaS: The Future of AI Compute is Flexible

As AI continues to advance, organizations that can efficiently scale their compute power will have a clear advantage. GPU-as-a-Service reduces the barriers of cost, accessibility, and scalability, offering an alternative to traditional infrastructure. With GPUaaS, you can tap into a global network of GPUs and ensure you always have the resources you need, when you need them.

So why wait? In a world where AI innovation moves fast, compute should never be the bottleneck. **Vast.ai makes enterprise-grade GPUs accessible and affordable through our decentralized marketplace, offering savings of 5-6X on GPU compute.** Whether you're training cutting-edge models or running large-scale inference, we provide the flexibility and efficiency to keep your AI projects moving forward.

Get started and harness the power of GPUaaS with Vast.ai today!

GPU shortages are slowing AI growth. GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) offers a scalable, cost-effective solution for on-demand AI compute power.

GPU-as-a-Service: The Scalable Solution to AI's Compute Crisis


Serving multiple machine learning models simultaneously is a key challenge in production AI systems. The increasing size of foundational models and constraints on GPU memory often mean that deploying separate models for each task results in high RAM usage, underutilized hardware, and latency problems caused by repeatedly swapping entire models in and out of GPU memory. This not only increases cost but also complicates scaling.

However, by leveraging Lorax, a framework for dynamically loading LoRA adapters—and Vast.ai's flexible GPU marketplace, developers can efficiently serve several specialized models on a single base model deployment. This results in significantly better hardware utilization, reduced infrastructure costs, and low-latency inference for diverse AI workloads, making this a game-changer for enterprises deploying their own AI infra.

In this blog post, we'll explore how to deploy and run multiple LoRA adapters on a shared base model using Lorax on Vast.ai's cloud platform. This setup enables hosting thousands of fine-tuned models simultaneously, loading task-specific adapters on demand, and seamlessly switching between tasks such as math problem solving and customer support classification with minimal overhead.

---

## What Are LoRA Adapters and Lorax?

- **LoRAs (Low-Rank Adaptation):** Lightweight, task-specific parameter adjustments that adapt a large base model to new tasks with far fewer parameters than full fine-tuning. LoRAs can be swapped in and out without needing to reload the entire large model, saving significant RAM and time.

- **Lorax (LoRA eXchange):** An efficient serving framework that enables running thousands of LoRA adapters on a single GPU by dynamically loading these adapters into a base model at inference time. Lorax maintains high throughput and low latency while drastically reducing the deployment cost of hosting multiple fine-tuned variants.

---

## Deploying Multiple Models Using Lorax and Vast.ai

The following example uses the `mistralai/Mistral-7B-v0.1` base model hosted on Vast.ai, along with two LoRA adapters:

- `predibase/gsm8k`: Designed for solving math problems like the GSM8K benchmark.
- `predibase/customer_support`: Specializes in customer service query classification.

We deploy the base model once and dynamically switch between these specialized LoRA adapters, enabling efficient multi-model serving on the same underlying GPU instance.

---

### Step 1: Set Up Vast.ai Environment

1. **Install Vast CLI and configure API key:**

```bash
pip install vastai==0.2.6

export VAST_API_KEY="your_vast_api_key"
vastai set api-key $VAST_API_KEY
```

2. **Search for a suitable GPU instance:**

The `mistralai/Mistral-7B-v0.1` model requires at least 16GB VRAM, but it's safer to select a larger instance (e.g., 32GB VRAM) for LoRA adapter loading.

```bash
vastai search offers "compute_cap >= 750 \
geolocation=US \
gpu_ram >= 32 \
num_gpus = 1 \
static_ip = true \
direct_port_count >= 1 \
verified = true \
disk_space >= 80 \
rentable = true"
```

3. **Deploy the instance:**

Make sure you have accepted the usage terms for `Mistral-7B-v0.1` on Huggingface before proceeding.

```bash
export INSTANCE_ID=your_instance_id

vastai create instance $INSTANCE_ID --image ghcr.io/predibase/lorax:main \
--env '-p 8080:80 --shm-size 1g -e HUGGING_FACE_HUB_TOKEN="your_hf_token"' \
--disk 80 --args --model-id mistralai/Mistral-7B-v0.1
```

This command runs the Lorax server that hosts the base model and dynamically loads adapters on demand.

4. **Get Instance IP Address and Port**

Now, we need to get our IP address and port to call our model. We first need to wait for our machine to download the image and the model and start serving. This will take a few minutes. The logs will show you when it's done.

Next, go to the [Instances tab](https://cloud.vast.ai/instances/) in the Vast AI Console and find the instance you just created.

At the top of the instance, there is a button with an IP address in it. Click this and a panel will show up of the ip address and the forwarded ports.
You should see something like:

```
Open Ports
XX.XX.XXX.XX:YYYY -> 8000/tcp
```

You will need the IP address (XX.XX.XXX.XX) and the port (YYYY) for the next step.

---

### Step 2: Query LoRA Adapters via HTTP Requests

Lorax supports on-demand loading of LoRAs from the Huggingface Hub, minimizing memory overhead versus deploying multiple large models simultaneously.

First, configure environment variables to connect to your Vast instance and set your Huggingface token:

```python
HF_TOKEN = "your_hf_token"
VAST_IP_ADDRESS = "your_instance_ip"
VAST_PORT = "your_vast_port"
```

#### Example: Math Problem Solving with `predibase/gsm8k`

Prepare a prompt:

```python
question = "James decides to run 3 sprints 3 times a week. He runs 60 meters each sprint. How many total meters does he run a week?"
math_prompt = f"Please answer the following question: {question}\nAnswer"
```

Make a POST request to the `/generate` endpoint specifying the LoRA adapter ID:

```python
import requests

headers = {
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
    "Authorization": f"Bearer {HF_TOKEN}"
}
data = {
    "inputs": math_prompt,
    "parameters": {
        "max_new_tokens": 100,
        "adapter_id": "predibase/gsm8k",
        "adapter_source": "hub"
    }
}

url = f"http://{VAST_IP_ADDRESS}:{VAST_PORT}/generate"
response = requests.post(url, headers=headers, json=data)
print("Response:", response.json()["generated_text"])
```

**Response:**

```
He runs 3*3=<<3*3=9>>9 sprints a week
So he runs 9*60=<<9*60=540>>540 meters a week
#### 540
```

#### Example: Customer Support Classification with `predibase/customer_support`

Prepare a customer support transcript prompt:

```python
transcript = "Hi I am having trouble with my account. It says I need to reset my password to log in but I already reset my password."

customer_support_prompt = f"""Consider the case of a customer contacting the support center.
The term task type refers to the reason for why the customer contacted support.

### The possible task types are: account issue, billing issue, product issue, none of the above

Summarize the issue/question/reason that drove the customer to contact support:

Transcript: {transcript}

Task Type:
"""
```

Make the API call:

```python
data = {
    "inputs": customer_support_prompt,
    "parameters": {
        "max_new_tokens": 100,
        "adapter_id": "predibase/customer_support",
        "adapter_source": "hub"
    }
}

response = requests.post(url, headers=headers, json=data)
print("Response:", response.json()["generated_text"])
```

**Response:**

```
account issue
```

---

### Step 3: Access Models Using the OpenAI SDK

Lorax provides compatibility with the OpenAI API, allowing easy integration into existing apps with minimal code changes.

1. **Install OpenAI SDK**

```bash
pip install --upgrade openai
```

2. **Call the math adapter:**

```python
from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    api_key="EMPTY",
    base_url=f"http://{VAST_IP_ADDRESS}:{VAST_PORT}/v1",
    default_headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {HF_TOKEN}"}
)

resp = client.completions.create(
    model="predibase/gsm8k",
    prompt=math_prompt,
    max_tokens=100,
    temperature=0.7
)

print("Response:", resp.choices[0].text)
```

Output:

```
James runs 3 x 3 = <<3*3=9>>9 sprints in a week.
He runs 9 x 60 = <<9*60=540>>540 meters in a week.
#### 540
```

3. **Call the customer support adapter:**

```python
resp = client.completions.create(
    model="predibase/customer_support",
    prompt=customer_support_prompt,
    max_tokens=100,
    temperature=0.7
)
print("Response:", resp.choices[0].text)
```

Output:

```
account issue
```

---

## Why This Approach Matters

Serving multiple specialized AI models traditionally involves deploying each fine-tuned model independently, consuming lots of GPU memory and resulting in higher cost and slower inference when switching tasks.

By contrast, Lorax’s approach uses a single shared base model and dynamically loads lightweight LoRA adapters tailored for different tasks. This yields several benefits:

- **Reduced RAM and GPU usage:** Only the small adapter layers are loaded on demand, not the entire large model.
- **Lower infrastructure cost:** A single GPU instance can serve thousands of specialized models.
- **Faster context switching:** Switching between tasks is near-instant as you don’t reload the full model.
- **Flexibility:** New adapters can be added or updated independently.
- **Ease of integration:** OpenAI-compatible APIs simplify adoption.

Combined with Vast.ai’s cost-effective, flexible GPU rental options, this method provides a scalable, production-ready solution for deploying multi-model AI services with a minimal footprint.

---

## Conclusion

Efficiently serving multiple machine learning models is vital for scaling AI-powered products. The combination of Lorax’s dynamic LoRA adapter serving and Vast.ai’s flexible GPU infrastructure offers a powerful, cost-effective, and scalable way to support many specialized models on a single deployment.

Whether solving math problems, classifying customer inquiries, or other tasks, this approach reduces overhead and unlocks practical multi-model serving for modern AI applications.

Try setting up your own multi-LoRA serving environment today to experience the benefits firsthand!

---

## Useful Resources

- [Lorax GitHub Repository](https://github.com/predibase/lorax)
- [Vast.ai GPU Marketplace](https://vast.ai)
- [Mistral-7B-v0.1 on Huggingface](https://huggingface.co/mistralai/Mistral-7B-v0.1)
- [OpenAI Python SDK](https://github.com/openai/openai-python)

---

_Happy modeling! 🚀_


Serve multiple ML models efficiently using Lorax and LoRA adapters on Vast.ai—cut costs, reduce latency, and maximize GPU use with dynamic adapter loading.

A Decade Later: Revisiting the Brain as a Universal Learning Machine

Alibaba's Qwen: An Open-Source AI Model that Surpasses DeepSeek?

GPU-as-a-Service: The Scalable Solution to AI's Compute Crisis

Efficiently Serving Multiple Machine Learning Models with Lorax and vLLM on Vast.ai

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