Andrej Karpathy, former OpenAI and Tesla AI lead, has published a powerful new blog post titled “Power to the People”, calling for a renewed commitment to open-source AI development. In the post, Karpathy critiques the concentration of AI power among a few large corporations and advocates for democratizing access to large language models and foundational technologies.

He argues that while frontier AI research has advanced rapidly, it risks becoming overly centralized — placing immense power in the hands of a few organizations. To counter this, Karpathy urges the AI community to double down on transparency, open weights, and community-driven ecosystems.

The post emphasizes the importance of smaller, specialized models trained by communities or individuals with local knowledge. Karpathy notes that as hardware becomes more accessible, running performant models on consumer devices will unlock broader participation and innovation.

‘Power to the People’ resonates as both a technical and philosophical manifesto, urging builders to reject passivity and actively shape the trajectory of AI to serve the many, not just the powerful few. The essay has quickly gained traction among developers, researchers, and open-source advocates as a call to action for grassroots AI.