Packy McCormick says AI is oil, not god, after Nadella and Huang back open weights
Not Boring (Packy McCormick) · rss · 2026-07-26
Packy McCormick argues that AI is “oil, not god” in a long essay reacting to Satya Nadella, Jensen Huang, and other tech leaders signing and sharing a letter supporting open-weight models.
Main points:
- He frames the letter as classic strategy: companies try to commoditize complements.
- The signatories span model makers and complementary players such as Nvidia, Microsoft, Hugging Face, Meta, Dell, and enterprise software firms.
- He argues that more competition at the model layer benefits consumers and businesses, even if some people worry open weights make it easier to remove safety guardrails.
- He acknowledges the counterargument that open models could be fine-tuned for bio/cyber harm, but says the strategic and economic case for openness is strong.
The post is lightly edited and partially paywalled.
More from AGI Musings
- VC compares AI doom rhetoric to pandemic-era fear messaging — StewartalsopIII · 2026-09-11
- Anthropic Insiders: Not Everyone at the Lab Believes in High p(doom) — anpaure · 2026-09-11
- Could 10k agents discover learning methods beyond backprop, or just tweak existing ones? — SeunghyunSEO7 · 2026-09-11
- AI companionship dissolves the friction real intimacy needs, warns long-form thread — YogeshMalik · 2026-09-11
- Why So Many AI Researchers Think the Machines Could Kill Everyone — wiredmagazine · 2026-09-11
- 'Hallucination' Is a Category Error: Naming AI 'Intelligence' Limits Our Imagination — Genaforvena · 2026-09-11