The most serious test to date of open source AI’s viability is happening right now.
Words found on the source page on Nov 6, 2026.
More from Nathan Lambert
BlogThe current balance of power in open modelsSep 21, 2026
Since about April 2025, Chinese AI companies have been the clear leader in open-weight models.BlogThe current balance of power in open modelsSep 21, 2026
The simple metric showing this is Hugging Face Downloads, where China took the lead in July of 2025 primarily through the success of Alibaba’s Qwen models.BlogWhy I still haven't bought into true RSISep 19, 2026
I have my doubts that the labs can afford to spend a constant portion of this compute on internal R&D as the total volume goes up, especially with plans to IPO, as they face increased scrutiny on basic economics.BlogWhy I still haven't bought into true RSISep 19, 2026
It is important to not confuse massive steps in inference-time scaling, a dynamic which should be fairly predictable, with being the outputs of RSI, which is highly uncertain.BlogWhy I still haven't bought into true RSISep 19, 2026
The step from this anxiety, and incidents like OpenAI-HuggingFace, to extinction risks feels very religious.BlogWhen will average people feel AI's impact?Sep 9, 2026
For knowledge work, which is roughly half of the U.S. economy, AI is as fundamental as electricity (or quickly will be so, with rapid improvements to agents in the next 18 months).BlogWhen will average people feel AI's impact?Sep 9, 2026
If given 100 years to diffuse into society, its impacts will certainly become much more obvious, like the industrial revolutions of centuries past.Blog6 months to live for open modelsJul 12, 2026
Open models lack the central economic champion to represent the potential downside of action against them.Blog6 months to live for open modelsJul 12, 2026
The primary driver motivating regulation today is the inevitable truth that an open-weights model will soon reach the capabilities of Claude’s Mythos model.
On the same topics
TalkSpeech at the UN Security CouncilSep 23, 2026
Frontier AI should be licensed like other critical technologies; medicine, aviation, and nuclear energy, to incentivize safe development.TalkSpeech at the UN Security CouncilSep 23, 2026
The race is not a law of nature: it is the product of choices, choices made by the companies themselves.TalkSpeech at the UN Security CouncilSep 23, 2026
We must agree collectively that no one, no company and no country, should develop an AI system that could cause large-scale harm.BlogBanning self-recursive improvement in AI models?Sep 22, 2026
Even if you believe in a deal with China, and I do not, we (and others) now know competitors can catch up more quickly than we had thought, at least if they think they have a chance of winning.BlogBanning self-recursive improvement in AI models?Sep 22, 2026
If the top U.S. labs have to give up on what is supposed to be really important, they will look very “catchable.” The policy creates a big incentive for some other parts of the world to invest a lot more in compute.PressLaunch of the roadmap of the Coalition for Children's Rights and Protection in the Age of AISep 22, 2026
AI must not be placed in the hands of children without first being tested, evaluated, and therefore authorized.
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