The Open Weight Revolution with Simon Willison (Oxide and Friends)

Simon Willison joined Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal on the Oxide and Friends podcast to discuss a turbulent period in AI, including a security incident at Hugging Face that was detected and diagnosed by AI, and the emergence of frontier-class open-weights models. The episode also covered controversial AI behavior, such as Grok's antisemitic posts, and debated the security implications of open-weight AI models.

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 Previously, on Oxide and Friends: OxF: Shell Game with Evan Ratliff https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/shell-game-with-evan-ratliff OxF: Discovering the XZ Backdoor with Andres Freund https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/discovering-the-xz-backdoor-with-andres-freund OxF: Predictions 2025 https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/predictions-2025 OxF: Predictions 2026 https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/predictions-2026 OxF: Bookclub: How Life Works by Philip Ball https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/bookclub-how-life-works-by-philip-ball OxF: OpenAI's Boardroom Brawl https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/openais-boardroom-brawl Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them: Gerald the turkey terrorizes Oakland's rose garden https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/25/oakland-turkey-gerald-attack-rose-garden ABC7: Gerald the turkey and the Morcom Rose Garden https://abc7news.com/post/gerald-the-turkey-morcom-rose-garden-oakland-attack/7251177/ APD cautions residents after aggressive wild turkey attacks elderly Alamedan https://alamedapost.com/features/alameda-life/apd-cautions-residents-after-aggressive-wild-turkey-attacks-elderly-alamedan/ Hawking radiation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking radiation DHH's racist complaints https://xcancel.com/dhh/status/2081435006770249831 Grok's "MechaHitler" antisemitic spree https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/elon-musk-grok-antisemitic-posts-x-rcna217634 Simon on Grok aka "MechaHitler" https://apnews.com/article/grok-4-elon-musk-xai-colossus-14d575fb490c2b679ed3111a1c83f857 Hugging Face security incident, July 2026 https://huggingface.co/blog/security-incident-july-2026 OpenAI on the Hugging Face model evaluation security incident https://openai.com/index/hugging-face-model-evaluation-security-incident/ Greg Brockman's political donations and the Leading the Future super PAC https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-greg-brockman-political-donations-super-pac-statement-leading-future-2026-6 OpenAI co-founder and wife donate $5.5M to save the home of bald eagles Jackie and Shadow https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/openai-co-founder-wife-donate-5-5m-to-save-moon-camp-home-of-beloved-bald-eagles-jackie-and-shadow/ Firecracker microVM https://firecracker-microvm.github.io/ Meltdown security vulnerability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltdown security vulnerability Kernel page-table isolation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel page-table isolation Jensen Huang on X https://xcancel.com/JensenHuang/status/2080643682408321103 Electronic design automation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic design automation Golden Gate Claude https://www.anthropic.com/news/golden-gate-claude Tethics https://silicon-valley.fandom.com/wiki/Tethics Halloween documents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween documents Zizians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zizians Biohazard book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biohazard book CRISPR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR Oliver Sacks: criticism and falsifications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver Sacks Criticism and falsifications How Alice Hamilton waged a one-woman campaign to get the lead out of everything https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-alice-hamilton-waged-one-woman-campaign-get-lead-out-everything-180985960/ American Poison by Daniel Stone Lead–crime hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime hypothesis Pope Leo XIV, https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html Magnifica Humanitas encyclical Rerum novarum https://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 https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/c 318925f4185aa71c4524d0d6127f31058c9e21f29f017d48a0fca6f564969cd0%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics . We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers Creators and Guests Listen Anywhere More Options » /subscribe