It's officially over. One of the fathers of AI at Nvidia doesn't believe in AGI and compares OpenAI and Anthropic's closed models to AOL and Prodigy's closed internets. Says the future is every business having a customized open source model.

### TL;DR NVIDIA’s Bryan Catanzaro argues that closed AI models resemble early walled‑garden internet services like AOL, and that the future belongs to open‑source models customized for every business. He emphasizes that open development drives faster progress, that no single lab monopolizes good ideas, and that global collaboration—including significant contributions from China—is essential. ## The Open vs. Closed AI Debate Catanzaro draws a direct parallel between today’s AI landscape and the early internet. “We actually did have a closed internet. I don’t know if you remember the early AOL and Prodigy and stuff,” he says. “They were great. The open internet was also amazing… Many different companies were able to transform their work through open technology.” He believes AI is similarly revolutionary and requires open technology to be applied across diverse industries. When asked about the gap between open and closed models, he downplays the competition, noting that “the whole AI community is moving so fast.” The rapid advancement of AI as a field matters more than any specific gap between models. ## What Drives Open‑Source AI Progress Catanzaro points to two main forces: demand and the inherent advantage of open development. Many organizations want to customize AI deeply, which requires openness. “It is also the best way to develop technology. We’ve seen for decades that open development of technology progresses faster because we can learn from each other.” He directly addresses the question of whether progress relies on distilling closed models. “When the technical community decides to invest heavily in the most transformative technology of our times, progress will be fast. And this technology will not be controlled by a small group of people.” He praises closed AI APIs from Anthropic and others but insists they are not the only source of ideas. “There’s no monopoly on all good ideas. That’s not how humanity works. There are a lot of smart people on the planet.” ## Global Competition and China’s Role Catanzaro has firsthand experience with Chinese AI—he worked at BYD’s Silicon Valley AI lab alongside Andrew Ng and Dario Amodei. He rejects the narrative that Chinese progress comes only from imitation. “It is absolutely false to say that achievements from other countries are created through some sort of mimicry mindset. That is simply not true.” He acknowledges that the technical community learns from each other, but specifically highlights that Chinese AI labs have been very open with their work, which has helped companies worldwide. “I hope that AI labs outside of China also maintain an open spirit,” he says, noting that he was excited when OpenAI and Google released open models, but “the world has an opportunity to catch up to China, and frankly, China has been leading in that area.” ## Why Businesses Need Open‑Source Models Every company has a secret—its intellectual property, platform, and how it approaches problems. “AI’s value becomes larger when it can connect more closely to those secrets,” Catanzaro explains. Because AI depends on data, and data often involves trade secrets, regulatory requirements, or unique business logic, companies need to customize their models. “When you are able to think and implement it yourself, it’s much better,” he says. Open‑source AI allows companies to tailor guardrails, integration, and customer interaction to their specific needs. He returns to the internet analogy: “The deployment of the internet served different industries in very different ways. People really want to do that.” ## Catanzaro’s Journey: From GPU Skepticism to NVIDIA’s AI Leadership Catanzaro started at NVIDIA in 2008, when using GPUs for AI was considered crazy. He remembers presenting a paper on training models on GPUs at ICML in 2008, and people telling him that the work did not belong there. “They said, ‘We only do high‑level math here.’ I said, ‘But I think computation is really important for AI. If we can train larger models and have more learning ability, we might solve more problems.’ They just nodded and said, ‘I’m not sure why you’re here.’” Despite the skepticism, he helped create early GPU‑based AI tools like Copperhead (a Python‑to‑GPU compiler) and later cuDNN, NVIDIA’s first deep‑learning product for GPUs. Wanting a more direct view of AI applications, he joined Andrew Ng at BYD’s Silicon Valley AI lab, where he worked with Dario Amodei (now CEO of Anthropic). ## Reflections on Dario Amodei Catanzaro interviewed Amodei years ago, before he became widely known. “Dario was obviously brilliant from the start,” he recalls. “What I admire most about Dario is the strength of his conviction. I’ve been in this field a long time and believe AI will change the world, but I don’t think I believe it as completely as Dario does—maybe because my academic training came with a lot of caution.” He notes that in 2005 AI was considered “over and terrible,” and that many grandiose promises had failed, leading to a cautious mindset. ## Looking Ahead Catanzaro predicts that open‑source AI will only strengthen because “this is actually how we as a human species build things.” The future, he says, is not about a few giant closed models but about every business having its own customized open‑source model that fits its unique data, secrets, and customers. Source: [YouTube Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oojrfdl42LI)