Prof G Markets
00:46:54 · Misha Laskin, Ed Elson
And so, it's just important for us, both domestically and internationally, in order to have, for our national security as a country, to have the best stack on merit, that our open models are the best, our chips are the best, and the world chooses to build on our technology. So it's kind of nuanced. Chinese models, it's, like, incredible. It's it's a gift to the world that they exist, but for our national security, we need to have a great offering that our that our allies can adopt. [00:47:24] S2: When you say the Chinese gave us a gift, I'm like, would they ever really give America a gift? And I think what you're pointing to is that there are sort of two theories behind why they would do this. One of the theories is it's not a gift at all, and they're trying to erode the economics of the AI market in The US. It sounds like you don't fully agree with that. And in your view, maybe the analogy would be something like the Belt and Road Initiative where they're going out building, making other Western societies incredibly dependent on their own technology. And as soon as you have the upper hand in that way, maybe similar to the way that we have a huge dependence on their critical minerals, which has obviously become a huge problem, then that's a lot of leverage that they can use later down the line. [00:48:10] S4: That's correct.
00:48:10 · Misha Laskin, Ed Elson
[00:48:10] S4: That's correct. [00:48:11] S2: Right. So I'm gonna assume that's what is happening here. I guess the next question is, why wouldn't The US just ban Chinese models? I've been sort of waiting for that to happen. Like, you know, why not just ban DeepSeek? Why why are we letting them flood our market with their open models? I guess it's useful, but I don't know. I'm just... I'm a little surprised given this administration's positioning on on China, why we have been kind of open to them... To using their models.
00:48:46 · Misha Laskin
[00:48:46] S4: I think that the lack of open source period, wherever it comes from, will actually be more devastating for... Like, that will be the thing that's devastating for our economy. Because all of a sudden, our startups can't build their own intelligence and can't compete with large incumbents. Our researchers get locked out, and can't really understand how these systems are built unless you're in one of the big labs. The whole, I think, notion of America's success as a country is in its ability to foster very diverse competition and innovation across this country, and openness enables you to do that. So I actually think that these... What actually happened, right, is that when DeepSeek v3 came out, there was a market scare, and some stocks went down. But the reality is that even... It was an irrational reaction. Those stocks rebounded and started doing very well because of demand for various things like compute went up. Because now that you have an open model out there, do you have more buyers for compute? Have now anyone who... Again, it's an ownership market, and ownership means that I get the model, and I put it on my own compute. So by nature of having a good open model, there's just gonna be more diverse demand for compute. Startups and the various ones that are doing more scientific pursuits will just be able to explore a much wider set of ideas than any one company could. This is just kind of the way the innovation economy works, and it's extremely important that we preserve that. Now, right? So it's kind of, I think that there's a simple answer that I think would be sort of nice for us to believe that China is bad, therefore open models from China is bad, but it's actually more complicated. It's actually no, open models from China, very good, but we also need to have our own... It's really good for ecosystem, but we also need to have our own great open models. These are the two superpowers of the world, and America is the predominant superpower. And so, it's kind of like you're building a foundational technology, it's like if electricity existed in one place, but not in another, right? You have to be competitive. You have to ensure that the world builds on top of your stuff for your national security.
00:51:11 · Misha Laskin, Ed Elson
And while they kind of seem at odds, both things can be true, that it's great that Chinese open models are out there, but it's also something that is a matter of national security for this country. [00:51:24] S2: Do you think Anthropic and OpenAI will, at any point, switch to being open? Do you think that... I mean, I just... If this is the direction we're headed in where, you know, if we're basically giving the engines out for free and the idea being that if you give the engines out for free, then that's gonna spur a lot more activity and a lot more growth and a lot more innovation, which will result in a more prosperous and more productive ecosystem where the returns will eventually be seen in the future. If that's the direction we're headed, and it seems like maybe we are, especially if China's just deciding to do that, why would you not use cheaper open weight models? I mean, does that not mean that Anthropic and OpenAI are gonna have to get with the program? Like, what are they gonna do?
00:52:15 · Misha Laskin
[00:52:15] S4: I think they're gonna do just fine. These are incredible companies that have scaled at an unprecedented rate and keep discovering new breakthroughs in AI. So, I think that you can be in a world where... I mean, it's positive sum world where it's a this and that. There'll be open model companies, and kind of builders on top of open models, and distributors that are successful, right? And there will be closed model companies that are successful, and you have a rental and ownership market. And just because ownership is starting to grow in its demand, doesn't mean that everyone will then own a house. There'll be still people who are renting, still people who are owning. Think that... Mean, OpenAI has open sourced models in the past. I think that when something is not the core strategy of the company, you tend to not pay as much attention to it, and you tend to open source maybe like a lesser version of the thing that you're actually kind of monetizing. And that's kind of what we've seen from open source launches, Google has done a lot for the open source community with the Gemma launches, but it's a very different model class than the Gemini models, similar when OpenAI launched GPTOSS. So, right, it's very different from the class of actual internal models they're sitting on. So I don't see that strategy necessarily changing for them, because I think that they have so much opportunity ahead of them just chipping away at their current business that I don't think they might, but I think they're also gonna do just fine.
00:53:54 · Ed Elson, Misha Laskin
[00:53:54] S2: Reflection has been in the news recently. Reportedly, NVIDIA was in talks to acquire your company or at least deepen their relationship, deepen their investment. NVIDIA is already one of one of, Reflection's largest shareholders. If you can speak to that, that would be great. But more generally, what's next for Reflection? What is the plan over the next few years? [00:54:20] S4: The goal for the company is to continue building great open models, deploy them into customer segments, into enterprise, public sector sovereign, and build a generational company around this. And we hope that we're not kind of the only ones that... We hope to see an ecosystem of open model builders come out of The States this year, next year, that rivals... That that is comparable, right, in quality to the Chinese open model ecosystem. I think the thing that makes China so powerful in its open model build out is that it's not just one company. It's a handful of companies, and it's a whole ecosystem. And then fact that one keeps leapfrogging the other, ensures that kind of as a composite, there's always great models coming out from there. So we want Reflection to be a standalone leader in this ecosystem. But we wanna see a whole ecosystem of such companies emerge in the West. We don't really comment on media speculation, but the plan for the company is to continue building great models and basically distribute them into enterprise and public sector and sovereign accounts.