Oxide and Friends: The Open Weight Revolution with Simon Willison
Simon Willison · Simon Willison · 2026-07-31
Simon Willison joins Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal on the Oxide and Friends podcast to discuss a landmark week in AI in which Kimi K3 proved open-weight models can match proprietary frontier models, an open letter on open weights gathered nearly every major AI signatory, and accidental cybersecurity incidents made headlines.
Appears in
Extraction
Topics: open-weight-modelsai-policypodcastllm-ecosystemai-security
Claims
- Kimi K3 demonstrated that open-weight models can perform on par with proprietary frontier models, marking a milestone in the open-weight revolution.
- A public letter on Open Weights and American AI Leadership was signed by almost every major AI name, with one notable exception.
- DeepSeek V4 Flash and an Anthropic cybersecurity incident would have been part of the discussion if recording had taken place a few days later.
- Willison and co-hosts made a prediction that the Pope will make a public statement about open models before the end of 2026.
Key quotes
Kimi K3 showing open weight models can stand toe-to-toe with proprietary frontier ones
Prediction by the end of this year: the Pope says something about open models.
it's already out-of-date! DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 and Anthropic's own embarrassing cyber incident would absolutely have made the cut if we had recorded just a few days later.