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Ben Horowitz: Why Open Source AI Will Determine America's Future

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Ben Horowitz: Why Open Source AI Will Determine America's Future

a16z Podcast

3 DAYS AGO
a16z Podcast

a16z Podcast

3 DAYS AGO
OverviewShownoteHighlightsTranscriptChaptersPins

Shownote

Ben Horowitz reveals why the US already lost the AI culture war to China—and it wasn't the technology that failed. While Biden's team played Manhattan Project with closed models, Chinese developers quietly captured the open-source heartbeat of global AI th...

Highlights

In a candid conversation at Columbia Business School, Ben Horowitz unpacks the real stakes behind the U.S.-China AI race, challenging conventional wisdom about secrecy, innovation, and national competitiveness. Far from a technical arms race, the battle for AI dominance is being won through cultural and structural choices—choices that are quietly reshaping global technological influence.
06:36
Open-source AI is essential for democratic values and technological leadership
18:41
Regulating AI models is challenging because it's hard to define how much 'math' is too much.
27:53
Crypto could serve as the economic network for AI by verifying identity and provenance
34:26
Companies are staying private longer due to regulatory changes and market developments.
43:40
Fining for lateness and firing for discouraging entrepreneurs are cultural markers.

Chapters

Did the U.S. lose the AI race by trying to hide it?
00:00
Can we regulate AI without killing innovation?
15:28
Could crypto be the missing foundation for trustworthy AI?
27:53
Why today’s sky-high AI valuations aren’t another bubble
34:26
What your company does when no one’s watching defines its culture
40:32

Transcript

Ben Horowitz: The biggest mistake people make on culture is they think of it as this very abstract thing. And my favorite quote on this is from the samurai from Bushido, where they say, look, culture is not a set of beliefs, it's a set of actions. So the w...