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NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has backed the expansion of open-weight artificial intelligence models, arguing that openness will be critical to strengthening innovation, competition, cybersecurity and American technological leadership.
In his first post on X, Huang shared a letter signed by NVIDIA and several leading technology companies and organisations titled "Open Weights and American AI Leadership". The letter draws parallels between the open-source software movement of the 1980s and the choices facing the United States in the AI era. The signatories said America's AI leadership should not be measured by the success of a single frontier model, but by its ability to build a strong and open ecosystem that allows AI to spread across industries and institutions. "AI will transform every industry, power every company, and be built by every country," Huang said, adding that the world needs both frontier closed models and frontier open models. The letter defines open-weight models as AI systems whose trained parameters can be downloaded, inspected, modified and run on an organisation's own infrastructure. According to the signatories, such models can help startups, businesses, universities and public institutions access advanced AI without having to train models from scratch or pay premium prices for every task. Open weights can also reduce dependence on a single provider, allowing organisations to control their data, adapt models to their specific needs and deploy them according to their requirements, the letter said. The signatories acknowledged that open-weight AI carries risks, particularly because released model weights can be modified and are difficult to trace or reverse. However, they argued that restricting such models would not necessarily improve safety. Instead, wider access could help cybersecurity researchers and defenders test systems, identify vulnerabilities and develop safeguards. The letter also called for greater access to computing resources, shared datasets and evaluation tools, while warning policymakers against premature restrictions that could stifle competition and push innovation overseas. The position received support from several prominent technology leaders. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said open source helps empower people and prevent centralisation, while OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he wants the United States to succeed in both open-source and proprietary AI. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also described open-weight models as essential to a healthy AI ecosystem, saying they could strengthen American competitiveness and expand economic opportunity while protecting national security. (ANI)
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