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Posted by louiereederson 9 hours ago

Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta warn against overregulating open-weight models(www.cnbc.com)
Letter: https://images.nvidia.com/pdf/Open-Weights-and-American-AI-L... [pdf]

https://x.com/JensenHuang/status/2080643682408321103, https://xcancel.com/JensenHuang/status/2080643682408321103

https://www.wired.com/story/silicon-valley-is-completely-div..., https://archive.ph/LAkVI

415 points | 204 commentspage 4
pietz 3 hours ago|
Companies that are hurt by open weight models fight against them. Companies that benefit from open weight models fight overregulation. Color me surprised.
steele 4 hours ago||
We demand that possible all avenues to observe, replicate, and resell exogenous value remain uninhibited until ROI and monopoly is achieved!
some_furry 9 hours ago||
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.

forshaper 8 hours ago||
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.
some_furry 7 hours ago||
It's a mix of grifts, gaffes, and Project 2025.
chasd00 6 hours ago||
> Start with the outcome you believe will be the most in line with the spirit and traditions of the open source community

there's nothing open source about an open weight model. It's more like the binary blobs Linux fought so hard against. If you can't compile, or in this case train, from source then you're missing the "source" part of open source.

some_furry 6 hours ago||
To be clear: This isn't a technical discussion, it's a political one.

While your point is valid on its own merits, it isn't relevant here.

paxys 8 hours ago||
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.

ryandrake 8 hours ago||
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.
Arubis 7 hours ago|||
Yeah, the endorsement logos at the bottom are majority bad actors with regards to openness in code. Many are bad actors with regards to openness in _society_.
balls187 7 hours ago||
Yeah, never ask a fox to count your chickens.
gaigalas 8 hours ago||
> 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.

chasd00 6 hours ago|
i'm glad someone else sees this too. There's nothing open source about an open-weight model. I feel like they're just trying to associate themselves with open source and the positive impacts it has had on software technolgoy.
pogue 8 hours ago||
Ok, great, so Microsoft believes in open weight models. So... uhh, why not release a few?
woodson 8 hours ago|
They did. Check out the Phi models (e.g., https://huggingface.co/microsoft/phi-4).
pogue 7 hours ago||
Great, how about some frontier models like China seems to be doing on a weekly basis at this point. Give us a CoPilot variant that's open source & open weights.
aesthesia 4 hours ago||
They could start by releasing the MAI-1 models they announced recently. https://microsoft.ai/models/
kittikitti 4 hours ago||
Now that their lawyers have cornered everyone trying out open weight models and banned the ones they can, they put out a statement like this.
surcap526 3 hours ago||
[dead]
lardosaurusrex 4 hours ago||
"the companies with the most to lose saw which way the wind was blowing and switched sides" mightve been an apt title.
ChrisArchitect 8 hours ago|
Some more discussion on NVIDIA crosspost: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49035751
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