---
title: "Simon Willison on Oxide and Friends: The Open Weight Revolution"
source: "Simon Willison 博客（Atom）"
source_tier: "t2"
url: "https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/31/oxide-and-friends/#atom-everything"
permalink: "https://feed.astralor.com/items/itm_27fd1254d8530bcfb963610f"
published: "2026-07-31T21:33:13.000Z"
score: 71
channel: "ai"
tags: ["AI Security","Anthropic","DeepSeek V4 Flash","Kimi-K3","Oxide and Friends","Open-weight"]
---

# Simon Willison on Oxide and Friends: The Open Weight Revolution

## AI commentary

> The weight of this conversation lies in how it repositions open-weight models from 'challengers' to 'definers'—when nearly every AI heavyweight signs an open letter, the industry's center of gravity is shifting. For readers tracking the model-route debate, Willison's on-the-ground observations capture real sentiment better than post-hoc analysis; and the 'Pope prediction' may seem like a joke, but it hints that open models have entered the center of public discourse. Even with newer events two days later, this record is still worth reading.

## At a glance

Simon Willison joined Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal on the Oxide and Friends podcast to recap a wild week for open-weight models. They discussed how Kimi K3 showed open-weight models can rival proprietary frontier systems, accidental cybersecurity attacks, and an open letter on Open Weights and American AI Leadership signed by nearly every big name in AI. Though already outdated by the time of release—DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 and Anthropic's embarrassing cyber incident happened days later—the episode also revisited January predictions and added a new one: the Pope will say something about open models by year-end.

## Key points

- Kimi K3 demonstrated that open-weight models can compete head-to-head with proprietary frontier models.
- An open letter on Open Weights and American AI Leadership was signed by nearly every major AI figure.
- DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 and Anthropic's cyber incident occurred right after recording.
- New prediction: the Pope will comment on open models by year-end.

## Full text

Oxide and Friends: The Open Weight Revolution with Simon Willison On Monday Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal invited me to join their podcast to talk about the wild week we've had - with Kimi K3 showing open weight models can stand toe-to-toe with proprietary frontier ones, accidental cybersecurity attacks, and public letters about Open Weights and American AI Leadership signed by almost every big name in AI (with one notable exception). It was a great conversation, even though 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. We also talk about Golden Gate Claude, the Zizians, Alameda wild turkey attacks, Soviet Marburg virus research, the Lead-crime hypothesis, and a bunch of other worthy digressions. Finally, we revisited some of our predictions from January, and we added a new Pope prediction: Prediction by the end of this year: the Pope says something about open models. Tags: predictions, ai, generative-ai, local-llms, llms, oxide, bryan-cantrill, ai-in-china, ai-security-research

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