Stability AI co-founder Emad Mostaque teases that an open-source 'fable-level' AI model will run on base MacBook hardware
Story Overview
Emad Mostaque dropped a single-sentence prediction that an open-source model hitting his personal 'fable-level' performance bar will eventually fit on an unmodified MacBook Mini or Air, yet supplied zero architecture hints, size estimates, or even a loose window for when that might happen.
The performance bar stays undefined
Mostaque contrasted the target with 'competent intelligence' like Sonnet but offered no benchmarks, evaluation methods, or examples, leaving anyone curious about real capability without a yardstick to judge progress.
Hardware claims rest on future efficiency gains
The post stresses possibility over immediacy, so readers tracking on-device inference can note the direction but must wait for actual model releases before testing whether base Apple Silicon can deliver without cloud crutches.
Users are enthusiastic about an open-source fable-level AI model running on base MacBook Mini and Air because it could democratize access and drive rapid innovation, though some doubt its feasibility due to high costs.
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My guess is 18 months fwiw.
My forecasts have been reasonably accurate on capabilities previously.
There will be an open source fable-level model that runs on a base MacBook mini / Air or equivalent.
I don’t think people have realised this.
@EMostaque
There will be an open source fable-level model that runs on a base MacBook mini / Air or equivalent.
I don’t think people have realised this.
@EMostaque Open fable level model may be 6-9 months away, but running on base MacBook isn’t any time soon
@scottstts The point isn’t soon. The point is will.
@EMostaque Yup
It will be gradual and slow but it will happen
@EMostaque Qwen 3.6 is old sonnet level and already does, that would be unthinkable just an year and a half
@Rafa_Schwinger Sonnet was actually competent intelligence
Fable was actually decent intelligence
Okay, Mostaque, but who's going to be able to run it? How much VRAM will you need for that? You aren't going to squeeze Fable like intelligence/capability into a a model with only a few billion parameters.
You might, if you have the resources, spend thousands of dollars on compute, GPUs and so on. But distillation and quantization only go so far.
Without some fundamental changes in how the architecture works, I just don't see it. Not any time soon.
@EMostaque Because base MacBooks will have the brand new M9 arm chip or will it run on today’s M5?
Small models are catching up but I worry we’re just physics constrained - or I’m missing some fact about the amount of junk in supermassive LLMs
I want this but minimal skepticism warranted
@EMostaque There probably already is. I am betting by end of summer it releases.
@EMostaque there will be 💯, but at this time fable 5 is the charm of AI existience
highist dopamine releaser in human brain 🧠
@EMostaque Intelligence will be everywhere, as will cat videos.
@EMostaque If http://Z.ai does it with a GLM. Microsoft might Copilot it’s own Deepseek V4
@EMostaque That would be wild!!Whats the timeline on that would you suggest? 2029 say?
@EMostaque It will be released in Feb 2027. Bookmark this.
@EMostaque Yeah, but why would you wanna do it? It’s from Anthropic.🤣
@EMostaque of the big ones? Open source models tend to show up first, then get shrunk. Even a Mac Mini with 24GB should handle it.
Is 2026 the year for that?
@EMostaque Funny enough, the closed Fable just got classified as a literal munition and export-banned days after launch. The open version running on your base MacBook won't need any of that😭
@EMostaque open source fable on a macbook air just means we'll all run it and still ask claude for help anyway
your thoughts please .. latest Apple Intelligence is good enough for most of the ppl for there d2d queries and images editing stuff AI companies need to look for cash flow in enterprise use cases obvious being coding ... Now if the model you say becomes available where ppl start to use it on device for their productivity tasks which gets powered by Apple M processors .. now where do you see Apple in this AI race