Productizing Large Language Models

Large Language Models (LLMs) are known for their near-magical ability to learn from very few examples -- as little as zero -- to create language wonders. LLMs can chat, write poetry, write code, and even do basic arithmetic. However, the same properties that make LLMs magical also make them challenging from an engineering perspective. At Replit we have deployed transformer-based language models of all sizes: 100m parameter models for search and spam, 1-10B models for a code autocomplete product we call GhostWriter, and 100B models for features that require a higher reasoning ability. In this post we'll talk about what we've learned about building and hosting large language models.