ODSC (Open Data Science Conference) AI(@_odsc):Using the biggest model for every task can work in a demo. In production, cost, latency, and task-specific quality can tell a different story. At ODSC AI West 2026, Rob Ferguson, VP of Technology and Strategy at @FireworksAI_HQ, will present “One Big Model, or Many Small Ones?” Rob will make the case for a different architecture: fine-tuning smaller, task-specific models and coordinating them through routing and evaluation layers. Drawing on experience across Fireworks, Microsoft, and AWS, he’ll explore how teams can identify good candidates for specialized models, build eval sets around their actual workloads, estimate costs more realistically, and route requests to the right model instead of defaulting to one generalist system. Join Rob at ODSC AI West 2026:

ODSC (Open Data Science Conference) AI@_odsc

2026.09.29 23:02

Using the biggest model for every task can work in a demo. In production, cost, latency, and task-specific quality can tell a different story. At ODSC AI West 2026, Rob Ferguson, VP of Technology and Strategy at @FireworksAI_HQ, will present “One Big Model, or Many Small Ones?” Rob will make the case for a different architecture: fine-tuning smaller, task-specific models and coordinating them through routing and evaluation layers. Drawing on experience across Fireworks, Microsoft, and AWS, he’ll explore how teams can identify good candidates for specialized models, build eval sets around their actual workloads, estimate costs more realistically, and route requests to the right model instead of defaulting to one generalist system. Join Rob at ODSC AI West 2026: