AbstractH24

Seems like the broader industry is waking up to what many folks have known for a while — models themselves are not a protective moat. They decay quickly and using them for basic tasks like structuring unstructured data is quickly becoming commodified.

What I didn’t totally appreciate until now is how that shifts us off the course where a few frontier labs end up becoming ACME mega corp which run the whole world and capture everyone’s money.

Power and value shifts to those who figure how to leverage LLMs to create value. Similar to how the use of a particular programming language is rarely the key to success and ISPs aren’t in charge of everything. Rather, the ability to turn code and a connection to people via the internet is the key to success.

So that makes me wonder - is the dot-com style correction in the industry required before we truly get a wave of exciting new companies emerge which upend society through the use of LLMs. Or can that shift happen without one?

I struggle to decide how this compares/contrasts with the dot com era. Where we had both the dot.com bubble burst and the internet totally change society.

Modern tech has a vast open source ecosystem and a huge investor backed one, but very little if any significant activity in the form of cooperatives, where individuals or small companies pool their money and other resources to take advantage of economies of scale and compete with large companies, but not one another.

Seems like something the space could increasingly use as folks become beholden to a handful of massive companies who are increasingly trying to exploit their size to increase prices, margins, and profit.