The Sun model of beefy server, ultra-thin client worked incredibly well and presaged the widespread adoption of virtualisation that eventually led to cloud computing and containerised software. Unfortunately that model made it very easy to undercut their prices using commodity hardware; I managed a Solaris/Sun Ray network c.2004 and it was cheaper to switch to Linux/Intel and buy spare hardware to keep in a cupboard “just in case” than to keep the Sun network going through its support contract.
And space launches. The Big Names will lose a ton of money and disappear as the tech commoditises.
The moat is Being Able To Do Things No One Else Can and as both hardware and software commoditise that moat disappears.
Open LLMs are already only a few months behind the frontier models and as soon as someone works out that accessible and cheap domain-specific custom training has the potential to be a gamechanger the Big Names will die.
Math puzzles only get you so far.
LLMs are in their Big Compute phase, and it's only a matter of time before that ends - because the intelligence of the frontier models isn't increasing fast enough and providing big enough benefits to make the models more valuable than cheaper, smaller competition.
grahamlee · · focus · HN ↗
alpineman · · focus · HN ↗
TheOtherHobbes · · focus · HN ↗
The moat is Being Able To Do Things No One Else Can and as both hardware and software commoditise that moat disappears.
Open LLMs are already only a few months behind the frontier models and as soon as someone works out that accessible and cheap domain-specific custom training has the potential to be a gamechanger the Big Names will die.
Math puzzles only get you so far.
LLMs are in their Big Compute phase, and it's only a matter of time before that ends - because the intelligence of the frontier models isn't increasing fast enough and providing big enough benefits to make the models more valuable than cheaper, smaller competition.