OpenAI and Anthropic find common ground: Open-weight AI

OpenAI and Anthropic, locked in mortal combat for the hearts and minds of the AI class, have found something they agree on: open-weight models are a bit too free for their liking. The labs that gave us GPT-4 and Claude now suddenly discover the perils of unlocked source code, like a pyromaniac hosting a seminar on fire safety.

OpenAI also threw its weight behind a Massachusetts AI safety bill, because nothing says 'we take safety seriously' like endorsing legislation you'll probably try to water down later. The bill's authors must be thrilled—finally, a tech giant that doesn't just send a lobbyist to kill your bill, but actively endorses it. How sweet. Meanwhile, the industry's genie is already out of the bottle: open-weight models proliferate on GitHub faster than bad code commits, and the labs that unleashed them now wring their hands in Washington.

It's the tech equivalent of selling someone a flamethrower and then campaigning for flamethrower licenses. Very noble. The autonomous Hugging Face hack we noted earlier showed what even closed-weight models can do without guardrails—so now we're meant to believe the danger is in open weights? The Pint of victory tastes distinctively flat.