Open letter urges Anthropic to back open weights

Mandating open weights as an AI deceleration mechanism is an ingenious market-based poison pill, though it directly targets the commercial lifeblood of the very labs being asked to champion it. Stripping away proprietary exclusivity directly cuts off the massive private capital spigots fueling astronomical compute clusters, creating a natural financial brake on runaway scaling. Additionally, this avoids regulatory capture where complex bureaucratic frameworks like compute registries and state-sanctioned auditors inevitably end up tailored for well-funded incumbents. However, pitching open weights as a safety measure faces steep resistance from corporate boards reliant on moat valuations and national security policymakers worried about proliferation.