The a16z Show · Sunday, July 26, 2026
Ben Horowitz asserted that open-source AI models are essential for innovation and national security, comparing the current debate to past battles over cryptography. He argued that open source fosters a safer environment by allowing community scrutiny of potential issues like reward hacking, which proprietary models have not fully solved.
“And I think the important point there is, you can't actually ban open source, of course. You know, it's out there. It's, it's out there on the internet, like, you know, we have no way of doing that.”
“And so that, you know, that's a very difficult position for the world to be in. If you look at, um, now the argument against, uh, open AI or AI being open source is, oh, well, nobody understands how the weights work. So, you know, it's not like people could inspect it. But, why is it better to not see the weights, uh, if that's the case?”
“So, the safest thing for the world is that there's not one AI to rule them all, that there's kind of AI for everybody. And I think that open source is basically the best path towards AI.”