A closely watched Nvidia-backed startup called Reflection is preparing to shake up the AI race with a powerful open-weight system that could threaten Chinese upstarts and U.S. AI giants alike, Axios' Bradley Olson reports.

• Why it matters: The marriage of an American open-weight model and Nvidia chips would give individuals and companies a new, cheaper alternative to the Big Three — Anthropic, OpenAI and Google.

👀 Open models, designed to compete with Chinese rivals, can be harder to monitor and regulate than the Big Three so-called frontier models. Supporters of such ecosystems say their widespread availability and transparency also bring security advantages.

• Reflection's first model will be joined by other open-weight models from other Western players this month, sources tell Axios. That'll bring a new competitive dimension to the AI boom.

State of play: Reflection's model, set to be released soon, is expected to initially lag behind the most cutting-edge U.S. models and be competitive with top Chinese open-weight models.

• Sources tell Axios it will still boast powerful intelligence — capable enough to help companies build their own proprietary, low-cost AI systems.
• Combining a lower-tier open model with high-quality company data can yield results that rival the most expensive frontier AI systems in certain situations.
• A Reflection spokesperson declined to comment.

💥 The big picture: Open-weight models, the most powerful of which are almost uniformly made in China, have taken Silicon Valley by storm.

• Unlike closed models like Claude and ChatGPT, open-weight models like Reflection's are generally available to be downloaded freely and can be used and customized by anyone.

Zoom in: Reflection's ultimate goal is to pioneer the "AI factory" — a product allowing institutions to spin up their own localized AI ecosystems.

• A company, for example, would take its own proprietary data, use Reflection's models and secure its own computing firepower to build a highly customized, cheap AI system.
• Some institutions, particularly hedge funds and trading firms, are already eager to build proprietary AI systems using their own highly guarded data.

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During our interview Friday for "The Axios Show," I asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent if he regretted his boast last month: "I am the house now" — challenging markets, which rebuked him, to bet against his "asymmetric information" at their peril.

• "No," replied Bessent, an investment manager for four decades. "The house doesn't win every hand. The house plays percentages. … Did I maybe hurt some fragile egos on Wall Street? … If you have an ego, you lose a lot of money."
• "Everyone in the market knows you don't win every hand, but you win over time," he added. "What I meant by 'I am the house' is that I have superior information."

Watch the episode.

LOS ANGELES — Voters could make history next month by giving the two largest U.S. cities something in common: South Asian immigrant democratic socialist mayors, Axios' Russell Contreras reports.

• Why it matters: Such a pairing would capture two forces reshaping urban America — its growing diversity and the Democratic Party's shifting ideological boundaries.

New York is led by democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

• The challenger for L.A. mayor is Nithya Raman, an Indian-born urban planner and two-term City Council member trying to unseat Democratic Mayor Karen Bass on Nov. 3.

Raman, who immigrated to the U.S. as a child, said Wednesday at the fifth annual Axios and Noticias Telemundo Visionarios event in L.A. that her family came to America seeking opportunities they didn't have in India.

• "The idea of this city welcoming an immigrant as its mayor … is just so deeply moving to me at this moment," she said.

A Harvard and MIT graduate, she entered politics after working on homelessness and neighborhood organizing.

• A September Berkeley IGS/L.A. Times poll found Raman with a big lead: 39% among likely voters, with Bass at 28% and 33% undecided.

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More voters are unhappy with both parties in this election than in other recent ones: 21% of voters hold an unfavorable view of both parties, a Wall Street Journal poll found. That compares with 13% in the 2022 midterms and about 12% in each of the past two presidential elections.

• Why it matters: These voters — "double haters" — have often been a bellwether, breaking for the winning party. This year, they could decide the midterms.

"Democrats currently lead among the double haters when voters are asked which party they will back for Congress, 55% to 27%. But about half of the voters for either party say their vote choice is just probable, not definite," the WSJ reports.

• Read on (gift link).

In an eight-minute video message to the Cornell community, President Michael Kotlikoff described the past week as "one of the most difficult weeks in our history" and pledged to be "more transparent" about the school's handling of the alleged gang rape of a student at a fraternity house in 2024.

• The president promised Cornell will produce "research that can deepen our understanding of sexual assault, trauma, intoxication and consent, and help shape better practices and policies elsewhere," including a deep look at the Greek system.
• "This is a defining moment in Cornell's history," Kotlikoff concluded. "We owe it to Jane Doe and to survivors of assault to get this right."

Watch the video … Get the latest.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took a veiled shot at Anthropic and its work on the soul of AI yesterday, writing on X that he's "very uncomfortable" with attributing some kind of religious power to models.

• Why it matters: It's yet another point of division between Altman and his former employee Dario Amodei, whose company has reportedly pursued scholars across faiths to make the case for moral, conscious models, Axios' Ben Berkowitz reports.

⚡ The backstory: The New York Times reported that Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah has been meeting with religious leaders to consider questions of model consciousness — and how to infuse morals and moral behavior into AI.

• At one point, The Times reported, Olah considered the possibility of models engaging in Catholic-style confession, not just to admit their mistakes but to shape their future behavior.

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73% of Americans say they're concerned that AI advances threaten human survival, a new Quinnipiac poll finds.

• Why it matters: Forecasts of cataclysmic AI doom scenarios are sinking into the national psyche.

By the numbers: 34% say AI will do more good than harm in their day-to-day life. 53% say more harm than good, with the rest not giving an opinion.

• 24% say they have "a lot" or "some" trust in the leaders of AI companies. 74% don't trust AI leaders.

Explore the results ... Methodology.

Above: Folk icon Joan Baez, 85, and Bruce Springsteen, 77, performed yesterday during a star-studded Power to the People protest festival at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Md.

• Organized by Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello, the festival aimed to celebrate "peace, justice, solidarity, music and community action."

The Boss opened with "Streets of Minneapolis" in response to the killings by federal immigration agents. Baez and Springsteen then duetted Bob Dylan's "Chimes of Freedom," AP Music Writer Maria Sherman reports.

Above: Host Ari Melber greets fans at the MS NOW Members Lounge at the Power to the People festival, after the network launched a direct-to-consumer subscription service last month.

• MS NOW, which hosted its first lounge at a "Together in Texas" fan event in the Dallas area last weekend, enrolled hundreds of new members yesterday.