The latest comparison of large language models (LLMs) on the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) shows that Llama3-70B, an open-source model from Meta AI, performs comparably to the proprietary GPT-4-Turbo from OpenAI. Both models achieved an average zero-shot performance of 86% across all three USMLE steps, with GPT-4-Turbo excelling in Steps 1 and 2, and Llama3-70B leading in Step 3. This evaluation highlights the growing capability of open-source models in handling complex, domain-specific tasks like medical assessments. Key Insights: - High Performance: Llama3-70B and GPT-4-Turbo both scored 86%, with 95% confidence intervals of 0.82-0.90 and 0.83-0.90, respectively. - Step-Specific Scores: Llama3-70B showed superior performance in USMLE Step 3, which focuses on applying medical knowledge in an unsupervised practice setting. - Comparison with Other Models: Other models like Mixtral 8x22B and GPT-3.5-Turbo also participated, scoring lower than Llama3-70B and GPT-4-Turbo. Implications: The parity in performance between an open-source and a proprietary model suggests that open-source solutions could increasingly provide viable, cost-effective alternatives for medical education and research. This development is significant for democratizing AI technology in healthcare, allowing for greater accessibility and customization.