Is open source AI really ahead of the frontier? 3 builders weigh in. | E25

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Today’s show:

China’s Alibaba just dropped a 2.4 trillion parameter open weight model that the company claims only trails Anthropic’s flagship among the major frontier rivals. Of course, this happened the very same week that the US government appears to have backed off from banning these models stateside entirely.

Are these models anywhere close to actually catching up to the latest and greatest releases from US labs like Anthropic and OpenAI? Really seems to depend on who you ask. (Even long time friends JCal and Elon Musk can’t see eye to eye on it.)

So on TWiAI Ep 25, we welcomed on Poolside AI CTO Eiso Kant, EXO Labs co-founder Alex Cheema, and Qloo founder Alex Elias to break down just how close Chinese labs are to catching up with the biggest and best models… and how long it will take US open weight builders to catch up.

PLUS we explore the cutting edge of AI-powered baby sleep monitors, consider Hank Green’s public AI apology, and dig into sci-fi author Ursula K. LeGuin’s “hand-mind” thesis.

Guests:

Eiso Kant on X: https://x.com/eisokant

Poolside: https://poolside.ai/

Alex Elias on X: https://x.com/ape

Qloo: https://www.qloo.com/

Alex Cheema on X: https://x.com/alexocheema

EXO Labs: https://exolabs.net/

Local AI benchmark platform: https://local.ai/

Relevant Links

Qwen3.8-Max launch announcement: https://qwen.ai/blog?id=qwen3.8

Bloomberg on Qwen3.8-Max launch: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-03/alibaba-drops-another-china-ai-model-with-breakthrough-performance

NYT: “White House Whipsaws Silicon Valley Over AI Rules”: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/technology/ai-washington-regulation-whiplash.html

Nvidia: “Open Weights and American AI Leadership”: https://images.nvidia.com/pdf/Open-Weights-and-American-AI-Leadership.pdf

World Bank: World Development Report 2026: https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/1e4e52502104a331fb42cba0d4afa995-0050062026/original/WDR2026-Concept-Note.pdf

Hank Green apology on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/nerdfighters/comments/1vbmoj5/comment/p0vzmog/

Taylor Lorenz responds to Hank Green on X: https://x.com/TaylorLorenz/status/2083272682188206564

TechCrunch: Substack partners with Pangram: https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/22/substacks-new-tool-tells-you-whos-been-writing-their-newsletters-with-ai/

Amazon: Ursula K. Le Guin’s “Always Coming Home” expanded edition: https://www.amazon.com/Ursula-K-Guin-Authors-Expanded/dp/1598536036

Timestamps:

0:00 Guest intros and open

10:03 Why Poolside thinks coding is the path to AGI

12:55 A first look at EXO's local.ai

16:24 The White House's open source pivot

20:21 Margins, compute, and "dirt to intelligence"

36:02 Jason's self-driving auction pitch

37:58 Hank Green's AI apology

38:45 Is AI addictive?

1:08:31 What does it mean for AI to be "privacy first"?

1:10:29 Enterprise AI sovereignty and "colonization"

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