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But, if model development stalls, and everyone else is stalled as well, then what happens to turn the current wildly-unprofitable industry into something that "

But, if model development stalls, and everyone else is stalled as well, then what happens to turn the current wildly-unprofitable industry into something that "it makes sense to keep spending billions" on?

accrual 11mo ago
I suspect if model development stalls we may start to see more incremental releases to models, perhaps with specific fixes or improvements, updates to a certain cutoff date, etc. So less fanfare, but still some progress. Worth spending billions on? Probably not, but the next best avenue would be to continue developing deeper and deeper LLM integrations to stay relevant and in the news. The new OpenAI browser integration would be an example. Mostly the same model, but with a whole new channel of potential customers and lock in.
camdenreslink 11mo ago
If model development stalls, then the open weight free models will eventually totally catch up. The model itself will become a complete commodity.
- DenisM 11mo ago
  It very well might. The ones with most smooth integrations and applications will win. This can go either way. For databases open source integration tools prevailed, the commercial activity left hosting those tools. But enterprise software integration that might end up mostly proprietary.
vineyardmike 11mo ago
Because they’re not that wildly unprofitable. Yes, obviously the companies spend a ton of money on training, but several have said that each model is independently “profitable” - the income from selling access to the model has overcome the costs of training it. It’s just that revenues haven’t overcome the cost of training the next one, which gets bigger every time.
- alangibson 11mo ago
  > the income from selling access to the model has overcome the costs of training it. Citation needed. This is completely untrue AFAIK. They've claimed that inference is profitable, but not that they are making a profit when training costs are included.
  - JohnnyMarcone 11mo ago
    I've also seen Open AI and Anthropic say it's pretty close at least. I'll try to follow up with a source.

accrual 11mo ago

I suspect if model development stalls we may start to see more incremental releases to models, perhaps with specific fixes or improvements, updates to a certain cutoff date, etc. So less fanfare, but still some progress. Worth spending billions on? Probably not, but the next best avenue would be to continue developing deeper and deeper LLM integrations to stay relevant and in the news. The new OpenAI browser integration would be an example. Mostly the same model, but with a whole new channel of potential customers and lock in.

camdenreslink 11mo ago

If model development stalls, then the open weight free models will eventually totally catch up. The model itself will become a complete commodity.

DenisM 11mo ago
It very well might. The ones with most smooth integrations and applications will win. This can go either way. For databases open source integration tools prevailed, the commercial activity left hosting those tools. But enterprise software integration that might end up mostly proprietary.

vineyardmike 11mo ago

Because they’re not that wildly unprofitable. Yes, obviously the companies spend a ton of money on training, but several have said that each model is independently “profitable” - the income from selling access to the model has overcome the costs of training it. It’s just that revenues haven’t overcome the cost of training the next one, which gets bigger every time.

alangibson 11mo ago
> the income from selling access to the model has overcome the costs of training it. Citation needed. This is completely untrue AFAIK. They've claimed that inference is profitable, but not that they are making a profit when training costs are included.
- JohnnyMarcone 11mo ago
  I've also seen Open AI and Anthropic say it's pretty close at least. I'll try to follow up with a source.