Excellent point, but now consider the availability of open source models as well. They’re not as good as the frontier models, but at some point they get close enough, right?

I run Llama 3.x locally on my 5+ year old GPU. It’s pretty decent. It’s not as smart as GPT-4 or Claude, but it’s good enough for a lot of what I do, and most importantly there’s no cap on the number of prompts I can send in a given timeframe.

For many consumers, it’s fine to be a little bit behind the cutting edge. My smartphone is 2 models behind now. It’s fast enough, the camera is good enough, and the battery is holding up just fine. I don’t feel any need to fork over $1,000 for a new one right now.

I think the same phenomenon will become more common for AI enthusiasts. It’s hard to beat free.

And what happens to the economics of building frontier models then? I suspect a lot of air is going to be released from the AI bubble in the next couple of years.