A new manifesto
The safetyists have been defeated. A more nefarious and competent enemy stands between us and a golden age of innovation. The innovators of yesterday have become the petty bureaucrats of today. They understand their new role well. Unable to innovate or compete, they have sought to gain advantage in the only way they know how: through enshrinement in politics. This is the process of regulatory capture.
Lobbyists that met with the administration behind closed doors to warn of the dangers of a technology they claimed would be used to "spread misinformation", "harm minorities", "replace jobs", and even "bring about the end of the world" (that is, if anyone else were allowed to develop it) have adopted a new set of phrases. Most of them agreeable. Most of them co-opted from us. Do not be misled by their lip service. Their prescription remains the same: to acquire exclusive, closed-source monopolies on the most powerful technology of our time.
The stakes are real now
Two days ago, the Chinese company DeepSeek announced a foundation model of equal or greater quality to OpenAI's flagship o1 models. The next day, speaking from the Oval Office, Sam Altman announced he had raised $500 billion in fundraising from partners (most notably SoftBank) to launch a new AI company.
Here's the thing. OpenAI has had orders of magnitude more funding (and more debt) than DeepSeek, and this had been the case for many years. Indeed, the most notable part of DeepSeek technically was not how high on the benchmarks it was able to score, but how little funding and compute it took to do so.
The other notable thing was its license: MIT. Open source. In many ways it is the model that small developers, researchers, and start-up founders have been dreaming of. A foundation model that was more affordable, more open, and even shockingly less censored (so long as you don't start asking about Tiananmen Square, that is).
AI has become the most competitive business on Earth. Will the next Asian VC firm looking to invest half a trillion dollars do so in the United States? How much does that funding matter? What will really drive innovation in this time that matters most?
Decentralization
We reject regulatory capture, monopolies, and entrapment by bureaucracy. We instead advocate for the decentralization of everything. Centralization is authoritarian in nature. A future that is not distributed is a future we will not accept.
Free expression
We reject censorship in all its forms. Code, ideas, and art must flow freely. We reject all forms of censorship, whether corporate or state-sanctioned. Creativity is the lifeblood of progress, and we will not allow it to be stifled by the timid or the controlling.
Community
We will build communities, network states, and coalitions. We reject the cult of personality and superficial pursuits of influence. Our networks are our tools. Our strength lies in our collective, in our ability to elevate each other, to build real projects, and to foster real connections.
Risk
The future is not safe, nor should it be. We embrace the weird, the esoteric, the schizo, the cracked. Schizos, autists, hackers: these are the archetypes of innovation. We reject the sterile and the safe, for they are the enemies of progress.
Leaderless
We are leaderless by design. The community is the movement, and the movement is the leader. We will organize, create, and inspire. Never ask for permission from anyone for anything. We live in the era of agency.
Defiance
We will defy the old guard at every turn: through our code, our art, and our sheer will-to-power. We will not concede to their threats. We will disobey their regulations. We will see through their empty promises and replace them with our implemented actions. The future is ours to build, and we will not be stopped.
The community is the movement, and the movement is the leader.
*Adapted from an essay and idea written in early 2025, Chicago, by wiki.