4 ms·

Frontier labs will figure out all sorts of ways to wiggle into the value chain beyond being commodities.

• SwellJoe 3mo ago
  When do you reckon they'll start doing that?
  • bluegatty 3mo ago
    They are raking in 10's of billions, growing revenues astronomically as we speak. That's not sign of commodity actor, just the opposite.
    • SwellJoe 3mo ago
      But, that's not what you said they'd do. I can switch to a different model with almost zero cost. That's the definition of a commodity.
      • fc417fc802 3mo ago
        They can do both things at once (and appear to be doing so).
      • bluegatty 3mo ago
        No, you switched to another SOTA model. You didn't switch to 'Random Corner Store Token Seller' down the street, did you? There 2-3 top players, that is not commodity. Commodity is when there are enough that none of them have market power or can set prices. 'Commodity' means you buy your tokens from the Grocery Store on their loan plan. Like consumer credit is a commodity. FYI predict this is roughly the way it will stay. We will develop a lot of use for Chinese Open-ish models etc. but the SOTA's will maintain their place for a lot of things.
        • bluefirebrand 3mo ago
          > No, you switched to another SOTA model. You didn't switch to 'Random Corner Store Token Seller' down the street, did you? You're assuming that SOTA never hits a hard ceiling, letting local models catch up and achieve parity It seems unlike that the frontier labs are going to be keeping ahead forever, they'll hit some kind of ceiling eventually
          • bluegatty 3mo ago
            It's a fair point about the 'ceilings' but I'm not quite making that assumption. I think a few things are going to happen: 1) The Open Weights never really fully catch up, because there's too much Engineering and integration going now. It's way more than 'weights' 2) The Commodity Chinese models never quite catch up for the same reason every other product they make does not catch up - while they will shine in some areas, it won't land fully. 3) Horizontal integration, supply chains, availability, SLA, security, branding, regulatory requirements - all of this will add up to something competitively maintainable. Can you name a product category that has truly hit a ceiling? Cars, computers, phones, airplanes ... always seems to be a way to nudge forward. Good point though.
            • bluefirebrand 3mo ago
              > Can you name a product category that has truly hit a ceiling I think basically every product category has hit ceilings by now, honestly. Do you think vacuum cleaners are significantly better at vacuuming than 10 years ago? Not really. But they pivoted to doing autonomous vacuums instead. The actual vacuum tech doesn't seem like it's getting much better though? Same with a lot of appliances. Fridges aren't really better at keeping food cold than they were 30 years ago, are they? They just have "smart home" stuff now, and they are probably much more energy efficient I guess you can look at that as "not reaching a ceiling" as an overall appliance but the actual discrete technology is not changing or improving much imo
              • bluegatty 3mo ago
      • abecedarius 3mo ago
        This assumes the best models continue to be publicly available. There's some level of capability where it makes more sense to go in business for yourself.
  • chickensong 3mo ago
    They already are. Non-model features are popping up quickly, most of which are vendor lock-in mechanisms.