The Importance of Open Source AI

I recently listened to a podcast by Leopold Aschenbrenner on the future of AI, AGI, governments competing on AI etc. Would highly recommend A lot has been said about this podcast and I thought I’d add my thoughts, specifically on open source, and the role it plays in this acceleration.

First, it’s worth mentioning on Leopold. There was some back and forth on twitter that he was at the FTX Futures Fund prior to being at OpenAI - in some ways trying to discredit him. I think this is a total misnormer. FTX, in all of it’s faillings, attracted VERY talented people, and the fraud only occurred at the very top. After being at Coinbase, all crypto exchanges have some rocky times. FTX was no exception.

The thing I took away most from this podcast is that AGI / ASI will quickly become critical to national interest. The person who controls the strongest AI controls the world.

It’s worth mentioning that we don’t have this conflict if it’s open source. Yes, everyone has access to make advanced bio weapons and drones, but at the same time everyone has access to stop them. In my opinion this is really the only way to make this advanced AI work, without having a crazy government-involved competition to create the most advanced AIs.