The Open Weight Revolution with Simon Willison

Simon Willison joined Bryan and Adam to discuss a wild couple of weeks in AI. First, we have a high-profile, AI-induced, AI-diagnosed security incident. Next we have the rise of frontier-class open-weights models. Who's for or against open weights? Do they make for a more or less secure future? Exciting times!
In addition to Bryan Cantrill (bsky.app/profile/bcantrill.bsky.social) and Adam Leventhal (bsky.app/profile/ahl.bsky.social), our special guest was Simon Willison (bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net).
Previously, on Oxide and Friends:
• OxF: Shell Game with Evan Ratliff (oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/shell…)
• OxF: Discovering the XZ Backdoor with Andres Freund (oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/disco…)
• OxF: Predictions 2025 (oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/predi…)
• OxF: Predictions 2026!! (oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/predi…)
• OxF: Bookclub: How Life Works by Philip Ball (oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/bookc…)
• OxF: OpenAI's Boardroom Brawl (oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/opena…)
Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:
• Gerald the turkey terrorizes Oakland's rose garden (theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/25/oakland-tu…)
• ABC7: Gerald the turkey and the Morcom Rose Garden (abc7news.com/post/gerald-the-turkey-morcom-ros…)
• APD cautions residents after aggressive wild turkey attacks elderly Alamedan (alamedapost.com/features/alameda-life/apd-caut…)
• Hawking radiation (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation)
• DHH's racist complaints (xcancel.com/dhh/status/2081435006770249831)
• Grok's "MechaHitler" antisemitic spree (nbcnews.com/tech/internet/elon-musk-grok-antis…)
• Simon on Grok aka "MechaHitler" (apnews.com/article/grok-4-elon-musk-xai-coloss…)
• Hugging Face security incident, July 2026 (huggingface.co/blog/security-incident-july-2026)
• OpenAI on the Hugging Face model evaluation security incident (openai.com/index/hugging-face-model-evaluation…)
• Greg Brockman's political donations and the Leading the Future super PAC (businessinsider.com/openai-greg-brockman-polit…)
• OpenAI co-founder and wife donate $5.5M to save the home of bald eagles Jackie and Shadow (kron4.com/news/bay-area/openai-co-founder-wife…)
• Firecracker microVM (firecracker-microvm.github.io)
• Meltdown (security vulnerability) (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltdown_(security_vulne…))
• Kernel page-table isolation (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_page-table_isolat…)
• Jensen Huang on X (xcancel.com/JensenHuang/status/208064368240832…)
• Electronic design automation (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_design_automa…)
• Golden Gate Claude (anthropic.com/news/golden-gate-claude)
• silicon-valley.fandom.com/wiki/Tethics
• Halloween documents (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents)
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zizians
• Biohazard (book) (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biohazard_(book))
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR
• Oliver Sacks: criticism and falsifications (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Sacks#Criticism_a…)
• How Alice Hamilton waged a one-woman campaign to get the lead out of everything (smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-alice-hamilt…)
• American Poison by Daniel Stone (penguinrandomhouse.com/books/724815/american-p…)
• Lead–crime hypothesis (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypot…)
• Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas encyclical (vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/docu…)
• Rerum novarum (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rerum_novarum)
If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar (calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/c_318925f418…). We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!