Nikesh calls inspectability a key argument for open models

Nikesh identified two arguments for open-source and open-weight models. The first is the ability to inspect a model’s chain of thought and understand why it proposes a particular action. Companies need explainability, auditability and verifiability, he said; it is not enough to say that AI made the decision. In his view, open-source or open-weight models are currently the models that allow their reasoning to be inspected.

The second argument is that such models can be free, but Nikesh called that view partly fallacious: training or adapting a model still requires compute. Compute availability and cost are currently limiting factors, he said. He predicted that once compute costs rationalize, the cost difference between open models and paying frontier labs for tokens will become more apparent.