The most serious test to date of open source AI’s viability is happening right now. I’ve seen many waves of anti open-source AI rhetoric come and go since ChatGPT was launched, but none of them had obvious analogues in their potential enforcement to real action already in place targeting the peer, closed models of the day. It is more real because new forms of regulation are being tested and implemented, with minimal oversight. I will be doing far more policy-facing writing than usual until this passes. As of writing this, many sources are citing White House discussions on how to manage open models via a new executive order. There is no official information here, and it would likely impact a) Chinese-origin models and b) government uses only, but this is how the dominoes start to fall.

Full opinion : Open-weight AI models face an existential US policy test; Anthropic is leading a regulatory capture campaign against Chinese models over distillation concerns.