This panel examines whether model weights and AI outputs qualify as protected speech, how AI regulation intersects with the First Amendment, and whether people have a right to run intelligence on hardware they own. The conversation explores the limits of “code is speech,” the privacy advantages of local AI, and why technical experts should help shape policy before new regulatory frameworks are established.

Panelists: Greg Lukianoff (President & CEO, FIRE) · Conner Brown (Executive Director, Bitcoin Policy Institute) · Kyle Olney (Senior Advisor, Bitcoin Policy Institute)

Recorded at the Open Source AI Summit, September 10–11, 2026, in San Francisco’s Presidio. The summit brought together 150 builders and advocates to explore open, private, and local AI across technology, science, policy, economics, and philosophy. opensourceaisummit.org

A big thanks to the sponsors: Buzz, Vora, Bitcoin Policy Institute, OpenTeams, and Presidio Bitcoin.

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This panel explores how open-weight models could compete with closed AI labs and how autonomous agents may earn, transact, and hold resources. The conversation covers control over data, the economics of compute, verification, Bitcoin, and why a diverse ecosystem of open models may be safer than relying on a few centralized systems.

Panelists: Max Webster (Founder, Hivemind Ventures) · John Komkov (Managing Partner, Fathom Capital) · Christian Catalini (Founder, MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab)

Recorded at the Open Source AI Summit, September 10–11, 2026, in San Francisco’s Presidio. The summit brought together 150 builders and advocates to explore open, private, and local AI across technology, science, policy, economics, and philosophy. opensourceaisummit.org

A big thanks to the sponsors: Buzz, Vora, Bitcoin Policy Institute, OpenTeams, and Presidio Bitcoin.

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Noah Smith, Senior Director of NLP Research at Ai2, explains why open weights alone do not give researchers meaningful control over AI systems. Drawing on Ai2’s OLMo and Molmo projects, he shows how opening training data, code, intermediate checkpoints, and evaluations enables reproducible experiments, more efficient models, and new tools for scientific discovery.

Recorded at the Open Source AI Summit, September 10–11, 2026, in San Francisco’s Presidio. The summit brought together 150 builders and advocates to explore open, private, and local AI across technology, science, policy, economics, and philosophy. opensourceaisummit.org

A big thanks to the sponsors: Buzz, Vora, Bitcoin Policy Institute, OpenTeams, and Presidio Bitcoin.

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The Vora team (Jesse Posner, Erik Cason, and Nick George) introduces Aegis, an open-source personal AI system designed to live in your home. They explore how local data, private hardware, and user-controlled intelligence can create an AI that works for you alone.

Recorded at the Open Source AI Summit, September 10–11, 2026, in San Francisco’s Presidio. The summit brought together 150 builders and advocates to explore open, private, and local AI across technology, science, policy, economics, and philosophy. opensourceaisummit.org

A big thanks to the sponsors: Buzz, Vora, Bitcoin Policy Institute, OpenTeams, and Presidio Bitcoin.

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Ahmad Osman, Founder & CEO, Osmantic, explores how rapid gains in model efficiency are bringing powerful AI from data centers onto consumer GPUs and phones. He makes the case that local AI is essential to keeping advanced intelligence open, private, accessible, and beyond the control of a few centralized companies.

Recorded at the Open Source AI Summit, September 10–11, 2026, in San Francisco’s Presidio. The summit brought together 150 builders and advocates to explore open, private, and local AI across technology, science, policy, economics, and philosophy. opensourceaisummit.org

A big thanks to the sponsors: Buzz, Vora, Bitcoin Policy Institute, OpenTeams, and Presidio Bitcoin.

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Political philosopher Michael Millerman joins Vora co-founder Jesse Posner to explore how thinkers from Plato and Aristotle to Strauss and Heidegger can help us understand AI. They examine open versus closed systems, the concentration of power, and the deeper questions AI raises about knowledge, freedom, and human nature.

Recorded at the Open Source AI Summit, September 10–11, 2026, in San Francisco’s Presidio. The summit brought together 150 builders and advocates to explore open, private, and local AI across technology, science, policy, economics, and philosophy. opensourceaisummit.org

A big thanks to the sponsors: Buzz, Vora, Bitcoin Policy Institute, OpenTeams, and Presidio Bitcoin.

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Era Qian sat down with Prime Intellect co-founder Vincent Weisser to discuss his journey building the company and its mission to democratize the infrastructure behind advanced AI. They explore distributed training, open-source post-training, and why giving developers and businesses ownership of their models could offer an alternative to centralized AI labs.

Recorded at the Open Source AI Summit, September 10–11, 2026, in San Francisco’s Presidio. The summit brought together 150 builders and advocates to explore open, private, and local AI across technology, science, policy, economics, and philosophy. opensourceaisummit.org

A big thanks to our sponsors: Bitcoin Policy Institute, Buzz, Vora, OpenTeams, and Presidio Bitcoin.

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Ramez Naam, investor and award-winning author, explores an alternative to the fear that AI will concentrate power and fuel authoritarianism. One where open-source, plural AI boosts human freedom and empowers democracy.

Recorded at the Open Source AI Summit, held September 10–11, 2026, in San Francisco’s Presidio. The summit brought together 150 builders and advocates to explore open, private, and local AI across tech, science, policy, economics, and philosophy. opensourceaisummit.org

A big thanks to our sponsors: Bitcoin Policy Institute, Buzz, Vora, and OpenTeams

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At the Open Source AI Summit, David Sacks joined Steve Lee for a conversation on the future of open-source AI, regulation, and the global AI race.

Timestamps:

0:00 - The importance of open-source AI

03:56 - The push for AI regulation and its impact on open source

11:35 - Trying to steelman global AI regulation

16:12 - Why China is winning in open models

22:53 - Why open models are critical for cybersecurity

26:59 - Payments for AI agents

29:50 - Organizing an open-source AI alliance

35:03 - Business opportunities in open-source AI

36:51 - The economics of open and closed AI

Learn more: https://opensourceaisummit.org/

A big thanks to our sponsors: Bitcoin Policy Institute, Buzz, Vora, and OpenTeams

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