I agree with the message, but I'm not going to accept it from this particular crowd.
Microsoft, NVIDIA, Meta, Palantir, IBM...They have all been actively hostile to open source for decades, and have a history of embracing it only when convenient and profitable.
Microsoft benefited from its close partnership with OpenAI for years right up until it went sour. Where was this enthusiasm for open weights then?
Meta was developing open models and then abandoned that effort in search for profits. Muse Spark is now fully closed.
All these companies have the resouces to train and release frontier open weights models today, but choose not to. So spare me the marketing and virtue signaling.
I’ll never forgive Microsoft for their hostile actions against open source and open standards in the 90s. I’ll never believe any endorsement from them of open-anything.
Different companies have different motivations. I'm sure some are genuine, but a lot of them simply lost the race (to OpenAI/Anthropic/Google) and know they can't compete anymore, so are shifting strategies. How many times has Microsoft done exactly this in the past?
looking at both openai and anthropic; they are winning something, but a sober look at their finances will make you silently mouth "but what did they win".
If there are effectively only two AI companies allowed to train or run model inference then demand for hosting, GPUs and data centers goes down, so they'd be able to squeeze their suppliers that much more too.
I'm finding the list of signatories on this letter really interesting and somewhat confusing, looking purely through the lens of economic interest.
It makes sense to see Meta, the startups, and the VC firms on this list. And it makes sense to see OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google all missing. Microsoft is somewhat unexpected to me. I don't think of them as having a focus on open weight models (no more than Google), and they have a large stake in OpenAI. Maybe they're looking at this from the angle of Azure providing compute. But then why is Amazon missing, when it has AWS?
And of course, we don't see DeepSeek, Moonshot, or Z.ai on here. The letter is about American technological leadership after all. But then we _do_ see the French company Mistral! Mistral who released [a playbook](https://europe.mistral.ai/) for Europe becoming a self-reliant AI powerhouse.
I assume all of this is in the context of influencing the Trump administration's thinking on Chinese open weights models. But the letter is really about _American_ open weights models. The call to action is all about keeping the American open weights ecosystem competitive. I didn't even realize that was under threat, so I feel like I'm missing something.
My hunch is they are all seeing the problems at OpenAI and some other collateral damage on the horizon. They don’t want the US government intervening to try to save OpenAI. A little controlled burn is probably good for the industry long term.
It makes a ton of sense to see this sort of joint effort being made by these enormous companies, but man, there's some part of me that can't help but feel grossed out knowing the best way to get the US to make the right choice is to have a handful of elite business people say it'd be bad for them.
Yeah, this letter is just proof of (the by now long standing fact) of corporate power/corporate capture of American governance. Tons of popular protests against big AI? Makes no difference. Joint corporate letter about big AI? Possibly the government will do something.
The issue is not open weights as a whole, indeed Hegseth himself said they are important for America (if American made, presumably); the issue is Chinese models, whether open or not, and that's what's looking to be banned, and nothing in this article suggests otherwise.
The conversation going on in the industry is a bit broader than that. OpenAI's head of strategic futures just said last week that open models are inherently decelerationist, ungovernable, and will slow development on the frontier. You'll notice OpenAI does not appear as a signatory here despite their relationship with Microsoft.
Well of course OpenAI and Anthropic say those sorts of things, it's what they've always said, particularly Anthropic, but that doesn't necessarily mean that's the position of the US government. In other words the government seems to be listening to some but not all of the lobbying done by the big two.
The guy who said those things just joined OpenAI in the last month. He was previously a senior policy advisor, specifically on AI, to the current administration in the White House.
I don't know that the US government has a unified position on open source AI. But it's not like this isn't a discussion happening among policymakers.
>open models are inherently decelerationist, ungovernable, and will slow development on the frontier
Ungovernable makes intuitive sense, but I don’t understand how open weight models could be decelerationist or slow the development of the frontier. Was there an argument for those positions?
Open weight models challenge the "winner takes all" hypothesis, which motivates the astronomical valuations and acts as a justification for trains of cash dumped into AI development.
In other words, if AI models become a commodity, the "AI leaders" will not be able to burn the cash like they do today, thus resulting in a "slower" (one could say instead "more sustainable") development of AI models.
It's a copy/paste of the arguments against open source software from decades ago. The argument goes: innovation requires profit motive, and profit motive requires IP rights. Of course, this was soundly disproven in software and I don't see any reason it should be different here.
> ...the issue is Chinese models, whether open or not, and that's what's looking to be banned...
Is the US planning to invade China and take away their models? Because otherwise China is still going to have the models even if the US bans them. I don't think they're going to be going with the US position on this one.
It's the same patronizing nonsense as when all the US webcos pulled out of the Chinese market in some misguided supposed protest believing the Chinese so incapable of rolling their own Google, Amazon or WhatsApp they will come begging the americans to go back. Now the western tech universe goes to China for ideas.
Banned in the US, obviously, not worldwide. The problem is if the US wanted to, they actually could enforce such a ban nearly worldwide, by putting Chinese AI companies on a sanctions list and disallowing any US company (or anyone that does business with a US company, which is much of the world) from touching them.
Why anyone would care what Hegseth thinks about open weight models? What's wrong with Chinese models? The censorship? I think it's good to have diversity of opinion. Get US flavored output on sensitive subjects from US models and ZH on ZH models. That's a useful tool.
> Open source did more than lower the cost of software; it created a shared foundation of knowledge on which generations of American engineers and entrepreneurs built their institutional sovereignty
Hey nvidia, what about making your full set of linux drivers open source?
I mean, I do agree that being open is important but you're hijacking the narrative here, and I suspect being open have nothing to do with any of this.
I don't personally have a horse in this race, but if you want to accurately predict the next step:
Start with the outcome you believe will be the most in line with the spirit and traditions of the open source community. This is precisely what won't happen.
It won't necessarily be the inverse. It could be, of course, but it's also likely to be a compromise between the two.
For a topical example: The companies doing "AI" layoffs aren't doing so out of a sense of having failed their staff that helped carry them so far. Often, these announcements come on the heels of record-breaking profits. They're doing it out of contempt for workers.
See https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/cory-doctoro... for Doctorow's take on centaurs vs. reverse centaurs. Broadly speaking: C-suite business leadership wants reverse centaurs. Workers want centaurs. Unless you have a union (or some other collective bargaining power structure that I'm not aware of), the C-suite calls the shots.
The same can be said of the current administration. They don't give a fuck what most of us want on any given issue. They're captured by an aggressive ideology. Their only incentive is to be able to spin their decision to make themselves look good; to posture as "strong" leadership.
Ideology? I think this administration is the least captured by ideology in the last few decades. It's mostly brazen self-interest, for both entertainment & profit.
Just saw on Microsoft
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/top...
Should probably just update the link to that; this doesn't need to be a PDF
I agree with the message, but I'm not going to accept it from this particular crowd.
Microsoft, NVIDIA, Meta, Palantir, IBM...They have all been actively hostile to open source for decades, and have a history of embracing it only when convenient and profitable.
Microsoft benefited from its close partnership with OpenAI for years right up until it went sour. Where was this enthusiasm for open weights then?
Meta was developing open models and then abandoned that effort in search for profits. Muse Spark is now fully closed.
All these companies have the resouces to train and release frontier open weights models today, but choose not to. So spare me the marketing and virtue signaling.
I’ll never forgive Microsoft for their hostile actions against open source and open standards in the 90s. I’ll never believe any endorsement from them of open-anything.
I wonder what is happening behind closed doors for these companies to be issuing such a joint letter.
Different companies have different motivations. I'm sure some are genuine, but a lot of them simply lost the race (to OpenAI/Anthropic/Google) and know they can't compete anymore, so are shifting strategies. How many times has Microsoft done exactly this in the past?
looking at both openai and anthropic; they are winning something, but a sober look at their finances will make you silently mouth "but what did they win".
If there are effectively only two AI companies allowed to train or run model inference then demand for hosting, GPUs and data centers goes down, so they'd be able to squeeze their suppliers that much more too.
Reassuring to see this backed by major players.
This is the correct stance, hopefully this is the stance that prevails.
I'm finding the list of signatories on this letter really interesting and somewhat confusing, looking purely through the lens of economic interest.
It makes sense to see Meta, the startups, and the VC firms on this list. And it makes sense to see OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google all missing. Microsoft is somewhat unexpected to me. I don't think of them as having a focus on open weight models (no more than Google), and they have a large stake in OpenAI. Maybe they're looking at this from the angle of Azure providing compute. But then why is Amazon missing, when it has AWS?
And of course, we don't see DeepSeek, Moonshot, or Z.ai on here. The letter is about American technological leadership after all. But then we _do_ see the French company Mistral! Mistral who released [a playbook](https://europe.mistral.ai/) for Europe becoming a self-reliant AI powerhouse.
I assume all of this is in the context of influencing the Trump administration's thinking on Chinese open weights models. But the letter is really about _American_ open weights models. The call to action is all about keeping the American open weights ecosystem competitive. I didn't even realize that was under threat, so I feel like I'm missing something.
My hunch is they are all seeing the problems at OpenAI and some other collateral damage on the horizon. They don’t want the US government intervening to try to save OpenAI. A little controlled burn is probably good for the industry long term.
Google and Amazon both have incredibly large compute deals with frontier labs and GovCloud. They may not want to sour on that cash.
It makes a ton of sense to see this sort of joint effort being made by these enormous companies, but man, there's some part of me that can't help but feel grossed out knowing the best way to get the US to make the right choice is to have a handful of elite business people say it'd be bad for them.
Yeah, this letter is just proof of (the by now long standing fact) of corporate power/corporate capture of American governance. Tons of popular protests against big AI? Makes no difference. Joint corporate letter about big AI? Possibly the government will do something.
People unfortunately keep voting for “corporate power” politicians, so corporations continue to be in charge.
Related:
China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48979269
The arguments against open source AI are bad
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49024643
AI Kill Switch Act: Official Bill Text by Reps. Lieu and Moran
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49028757
The issue is not open weights as a whole, indeed Hegseth himself said they are important for America (if American made, presumably); the issue is Chinese models, whether open or not, and that's what's looking to be banned, and nothing in this article suggests otherwise.
The conversation going on in the industry is a bit broader than that. OpenAI's head of strategic futures just said last week that open models are inherently decelerationist, ungovernable, and will slow development on the frontier. You'll notice OpenAI does not appear as a signatory here despite their relationship with Microsoft.
Well of course OpenAI and Anthropic say those sorts of things, it's what they've always said, particularly Anthropic, but that doesn't necessarily mean that's the position of the US government. In other words the government seems to be listening to some but not all of the lobbying done by the big two.
The guy who said those things just joined OpenAI in the last month. He was previously a senior policy advisor, specifically on AI, to the current administration in the White House.
I don't know that the US government has a unified position on open source AI. But it's not like this isn't a discussion happening among policymakers.
>open models are inherently decelerationist, ungovernable, and will slow development on the frontier
Ungovernable makes intuitive sense, but I don’t understand how open weight models could be decelerationist or slow the development of the frontier. Was there an argument for those positions?
Open weight models challenge the "winner takes all" hypothesis, which motivates the astronomical valuations and acts as a justification for trains of cash dumped into AI development.
In other words, if AI models become a commodity, the "AI leaders" will not be able to burn the cash like they do today, thus resulting in a "slower" (one could say instead "more sustainable") development of AI models.
Here's his original post https://x.com/i/status/2078133895766114412
It's a copy/paste of the arguments against open source software from decades ago. The argument goes: innovation requires profit motive, and profit motive requires IP rights. Of course, this was soundly disproven in software and I don't see any reason it should be different here.
> ...the issue is Chinese models, whether open or not, and that's what's looking to be banned...
Is the US planning to invade China and take away their models? Because otherwise China is still going to have the models even if the US bans them. I don't think they're going to be going with the US position on this one.
It's the same patronizing nonsense as when all the US webcos pulled out of the Chinese market in some misguided supposed protest believing the Chinese so incapable of rolling their own Google, Amazon or WhatsApp they will come begging the americans to go back. Now the western tech universe goes to China for ideas.
Banned in the US, obviously, not worldwide. The problem is if the US wanted to, they actually could enforce such a ban nearly worldwide, by putting Chinese AI companies on a sanctions list and disallowing any US company (or anyone that does business with a US company, which is much of the world) from touching them.
Why anyone would care what Hegseth thinks about open weight models? What's wrong with Chinese models? The censorship? I think it's good to have diversity of opinion. Get US flavored output on sensitive subjects from US models and ZH on ZH models. That's a useful tool.
I mean I agree with you, as what I said above is not my position, that's the US government's position.
> Open source did more than lower the cost of software; it created a shared foundation of knowledge on which generations of American engineers and entrepreneurs built their institutional sovereignty
Hey nvidia, what about making your full set of linux drivers open source?
I mean, I do agree that being open is important but you're hijacking the narrative here, and I suspect being open have nothing to do with any of this.
I don't personally have a horse in this race, but if you want to accurately predict the next step:
Start with the outcome you believe will be the most in line with the spirit and traditions of the open source community. This is precisely what won't happen.
It won't necessarily be the inverse. It could be, of course, but it's also likely to be a compromise between the two.
For a topical example: The companies doing "AI" layoffs aren't doing so out of a sense of having failed their staff that helped carry them so far. Often, these announcements come on the heels of record-breaking profits. They're doing it out of contempt for workers.
See https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/cory-doctoro... for Doctorow's take on centaurs vs. reverse centaurs. Broadly speaking: C-suite business leadership wants reverse centaurs. Workers want centaurs. Unless you have a union (or some other collective bargaining power structure that I'm not aware of), the C-suite calls the shots.
The same can be said of the current administration. They don't give a fuck what most of us want on any given issue. They're captured by an aggressive ideology. Their only incentive is to be able to spin their decision to make themselves look good; to posture as "strong" leadership.
Ideology? I think this administration is the least captured by ideology in the last few decades. It's mostly brazen self-interest, for both entertainment & profit.