Thinking Machines will let companies download its new AI model for free
Inkling 2 Small is strong at finance, legal and coding work. Thinking Machines plans to release it next week under a license that allows free business use, once outside safety testing ends.
The short version
- Thinking Machines, an AI research company, has released Inkling 2 Small, a model that does especially well on finance and legal work.
- In the company's own tests it led a group of downloadable rival models on several finance and legal tasks.
- It runs only on the company's own service for now. A free download for business use should follow next week, once outside safety testing ends.
What Thinking Machines released
Thinking Machines builds AI models and tools for companies that want to customize them. Inkling 2 Small is its second generation. It reads images as well as text, and it can work through long tasks on its own. Despite the name, it is a large model.
For now you can use it only through Tinker, the company's service for running and retraining models. You can try it there today. The company says it will publish the full model next week under Apache 2.0, a license that allows free commercial use. That depends on outside safety testing finishing first.
Where it is strong
The company compared it with other models that anyone can download. A few results stand out for business use.
- Finance: it scored 67.5% on Finance Agent, a standard test of financial analysis, the best in that comparison.
- Legal: it scored 73.9% on the Vals Legal Index, also the top score in its group.
- Everyday office work: it scored 70.5% on JobBench, a test built on realistic job tasks, again ahead of the models shown.
- Images: it reads screenshots and charts well, along with scanned text.
It also completed a full research job without help. Given 12 hours and a $500 budget, it trained a smaller AI model to forecast things like weather and web traffic. It finished after about 4.5 hours, having spent $426.
The company is open about weak spots. It says the model is less polished as a chat assistant. Its answers can be poorly organized, and it overreacts to some questions about mental health.
What it means for companies in Indonesia
Models you can download matter most to firms that want to keep data on their own servers. Banks and insurers that must keep customer records in-house fit that profile. A downloadable model can run on computers they control, in Indonesia.
Inkling 2 Small's strengths in finance and legal work suit those same firms. A free license means no fees to the model maker. You still pay for the computers that run it, and a model this size needs serious hardware.
Two cautions apply. The download isn't out yet, and its timing depends on the safety tests. And the scores come from the company's own testing. Check the model on your own documents, including in Bahasa Indonesia, before you rely on it.
What to do next
- Try it on Tinker with a sample of your own finance or legal tasks.
- Wait for the download before planning to run it on your own servers.
- Compare it with the models you use now on cost and accuracy, and on how well it handles Bahasa Indonesia.
- Ask your legal team to check the license terms before any commercial use.