Open Source vs. Closed Source, Memory Chips Eat AI Profits, Comcast Restructures | Diet TBPN

**John Coogan** (0:02)
Well, on the front of the Wall Street Journal today, this is how you know this is the whole AI 2027, Washington waking up. The AI stories are making it to the front page, the world news section, not just the business and finance section, more and more. So the picture is about the heat wave, but the lead, the story with the largest text is about artificial intelligence. China resets the AI race with the United States as security models mark gains. We're going to get into it. This is a fascinating debate, because I thought that we'd have a conclusion to the open source AI debate by now. Either the frontier would have collapsed and there would be perfect commoditization, or they would have fallen so far behind.

**Jordi Hays** (0:51)
It'll just go, it's over. We're so back. It's over.

**John Coogan** (0:55)
If you're in open source AI, that's exactly how it feels.
The big story is centering on GLM 5.2 from z.ai. It was officially released June 13th, so it's taken a couple weeks for it to really break through to the front page of the Wall Street Journal. But there's seen some strong performance on benchmarks, some positive reviews from developers. I have a whole review from Tyler we can go through in a little bit. But we're now entering another round of debates around open source AI. What can the model actually do? Is this a threat to national security? What are the geopolitical ramifications here? And so I'm sure this will be an ongoing conversation throughout this week, probably next week, we have some guests lined up to help contextualize it. But laying down the facts from the journal, security researchers said that a new AI model released this month by China's Zipu AI, also known as ZAI, can match the latest US models when it comes to finding security bugs. And development poised to reset the global tech race and pressure the White House in its overhaul of US. AI policy. So unlike models from Anthropic or OpenAI, Zipu's GLM 5.2 is open weight. You can just download it, run it anywhere. You don't need to go to an API. You don't need to go to a private company and pay them. You can run it on your own server, provided you have the electricity and GPUs to do so. It is expensive to run, as we'll go into, but it is open weight. That means it can be downloaded, run on hardware, operated by anybody, and can be modified and used without supervision. Scary stuff. Open weight models are ideal for users who want unfettered access to systems they control, but they're also ideal for hackers who want to run them in the shadow.

**Jordi Hays** (2:34)
Unfettered intelligence.

**John Coogan** (2:36)
Unfettered, oh, that's a good...

**Jordi Hays** (2:38)
We are completely out of names for new NeoLabs.

**John Coogan** (2:41)
That's a good NeoLab name, yeah.

**Jordi Hays** (2:43)
Unfettered intelligence.

**John Coogan** (2:44)
Unfettered intelligence is good.
GLM 5.2 has ranked as one of the top 10 most used AI models, according to data from OpenRouter, a company that provides access to more than 400 AI models. And what a fantastic business. Alex Attala over there. Absolutely cooking at OpenRouter. It's such an exciting way to plug into the AI race without actually needing to play the benchmark game so much, be the front door. Anyway, in some benchmarking tests, according to cybersecurity company Semgrep, GLM 5.2 bested Anthropix Clawed Opus 4.8 model, which was released in May. When given further instructions, Opus 4.8 and GLM 5.2 can match mythos in bug-binding ability, according to researchers. So prior to this launch, and there's a chart that we should pull up here about overall AI capability. We can talk to Tyler about what this chart actually means, but there was this narrative brewing that open source AI was slowing down relative to the closed source frontier. And I saw a lot of American AI fans sort of cheer for this. Hey, we have the capital markets, we have the data centers, we have the researchers. And so we are able to push the frontier at a different rate. And if we're actually growing at a faster rate in America within the closed source labs, that will compound and there will be a stronger takeoff in the American closed source AI industry.
Now this chart sort of goes back and forth, and there's some debate over it. It's in the newsletter. You can go sign up at tbpn.com while we're pulling that up. Let me tell you about Codex. Codex is a powerful workspace for getting work done with AI agents. Whether you're writing code, analyzing data, creating content or automating business workflows, Codex helps you move projects forward from start to finish. This chart, which we can pull up, shows progress from GPT-40 to 0.1, 0.3 mini, 0.3, OPUS-4, GPT-5, 5.2, OPUS-46, GPT-54, GPT-55, showing a linear trend in this ELO, which is a blend.