Skip to content
Quotes.

Nathan Lambert quote, Sep 19, 2026

Author, Interconnects · Sep 19, 2026 · Post, Why I still haven't bought into true RSI

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.

Primary source

Words found on the source page on Sep 25, 2026.

More from Nathan Lambert

Quote
Since about April 2025, Chinese AI companies have been the clear leader in open-weight models.Sep 21, 2026· Post
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.Sep 21, 2026· Post
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.Sep 19, 2026· Post
The step from this anxiety, and incidents like OpenAI-HuggingFace, to extinction risks feels very religious.Sep 19, 2026· Post
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).Sep 9, 2026· Post
If given 100 years to diffuse into society, its impacts will certainly become much more obvious, like the industrial revolutions of centuries past.Sep 9, 2026· Post
Open models lack the central economic champion to represent the potential downside of action against them.Jul 12, 2026· Post
The most serious test to date of open source AI’s viability is happening right now.Jul 12, 2026· Post
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.Jul 12, 2026· Post

On the same topics

Quote
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.Tyler CowenSep 22, 2026· Post
A world with sufficient compute is one where intelligence is a commodity, and in commodity markets margin comes from a superior cost structure, which I would expect the leading model providers to have, in part because they have a meaningful lead in scaling and can apply superior AI to their infrastructure.Ben ThompsonSep 21, 2026· Post
If you have five hours, you’re probably going to do a lot better. The AI models are pretty similar.Noam BrownSep 17, 2026· Interview
But in my view, the net effect of the last decade of “Doomer” talk (Coxon appears to be a card-carrying member of that party) has been to make the Frontier AI companies wealthier and more powerful.Gary MarcusSep 10, 2026· Post
Everytime they scream that AI is going to kill us all, VCs toss in billions more.Gary MarcusSep 10, 2026· Post
AI has reached its inflection point. It’s doing useful work. Its tokens are productive and profitable. Now, compute is revenue...Jensen HuangAug 26, 2026· Earnings
About this quote
Said by
Nathan Lambert, Author, Interconnects
Where
Why I still haven't bought into true RSI
Topics
Compute, Investment
Company
Interconnects
Source
interconnects.ai/p/where-i-stand-on-rsi

A quote is one moment, not the whole argument. Read it in context at the source.

Sources: the primary source linked on each quote, checked weekly. A quote is one moment; read the source. Logos via logo.dev; trademarks belong to their owners.

New quotes by email

Fridays, only in weeks with new on-the-record quotes from data and AI leaders.

Double opt-in. Unsubscribe any time.