Artificial intelligence is entering a new era, and one of the most important policy debates is no longer about which company has the most powerful model—it is about who should have access to that power. Should frontier AI remain behind secure, centrally managed APIs, or should advanced open-weight models be freely available for anyone to download, modify and deploy?

In this episode, we examine the paper Open Weights and American AI Leadership, which argues that open-weight AI is essential for innovation, economic growth, competition and American technological leadership. The paper draws strong parallels with the success of open-source software, highlighting how open ecosystems have driven decades of technological progress and enabled organisations of every size to build transformative products.

While recognising the compellin ...