And then someone will come up with lamp pro max and you’ll be out of business. You realize why R&D exists in tech companies even though it’s a cost center right?

OpenAI won't be able to cut R&D spend and collect rent on their existing models as long as the Chinese models keep up the pace of being ~6 months behind them for a fraction of the price.

And if you wait 12 months, someone will be giving away lamps for free that work just as well.

It's more like you have a business making engines, each generation of engine has eventually turned out to be profitable over its lifespan, but each generation has an exponentially increasing R&D cost and your customers will switch from the old engines to a competitor if they don't like the newest generation.

You're stuck racing against your competitors with the distinct possibility that your R&D costs will outgrow the market demand, and you can't stop because otherwise your customers will stop investing in your dead end tech and switch.

Except that your ability to sell that lamp is conditioned on other people not giving away the same lamp for free. GLM 5.2 is free.. which leaves OpenAI with what? Harness layers that competitors do better? Seems like OpenAI needs to keep training, but distillers will always be able to distill cheaper than you can train.

High risk high reward I guess