The Fight Tearing Apart Silicon Valley episode artwork

EPISODE · Jul 31, 2026 · 26 MIN

The Fight Tearing Apart Silicon Valley

from The Daily · host The New York Times

For years, a debate has been simmering in Silicon Valley over the right way to build artificial intelligence. Should it be open and free for anyone to use, or should we tightly control how it’s made and who can access it? Mike Isaac, who covers technology for The New York Times, explains why the release of two Chinese models pushed that debate to a boiling point this week, and how it could end up reshaping the future of A.I. Guest: Mike Isaac, a New York Times reporter based in the San Francisco Bay Area, covering tech companies and Silicon Valley. Background reading:  Silicon Valley splits over closing the borders to Chinese A.I. What is open-weights A.I.? Photo: Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.  For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.  Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Episode metadata supplied by the publisher feed · Published Jul 31, 2026

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Anthropic and OpenAI are clashing with the rest of the tech industry over whether “open-source” models from China should be freely available or restricted.

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The Fight Tearing Apart Silicon Valley

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