I don't care much about business models. Maybe OpenAI goes bankrupt and bigger players like Microsoft and Google take back over. Maybe China plays a bigger role. What I care about is the social role of the technology, and I also suspect that's what "bubble" believers care about, at bottom.
As one of the "bubble" guys, I believe that LLM technology will be with us for the foreseeable future. That's a genie that doesn't get put back in the bottle, and has sufficient niche uses to stick around in some form. The business models are important - esp. for a social scientist - because...
... those will dictate what the "social role" looks like. Right now, the social role is very individualistic. I can run an LLM to do MY tasks. That role is extremely subsidized at the moment with current business models. If the bubble bursts, that role changes. If you need the resources of ...
... a nation state to run and maintain these things, then they will be used on nation state-sized problems, not by a Python vibe coder writing their first app. The tech will slip from something akin to the personal automobile to something a rocket in a national space program. There will still be...
... a social role, but one that is expressed in second-order effects in products like Starlink, as opposed to having direct personal access to the Moon itself. I don't know where that leaves me on the "religion" thing, but I do think that too many folks are discounting scenario where large orgs...
... end up being the ones shepherding this technology for their own ends, which probably only lines up with individual desires and goals occasionally. Not unlike how democratized the Web was in '90s and early '00s, only to end up primarily a bunch of large silos for communication.
There's a version of that concern I find plausible. But we have to start by sweeping away the notion that it might really require "the resources of a nation-state to run and maintain" models, if we didn't have irrational investment. a) Inference is profitable.
This assumes that smaller orgs can get away with the copyright infringements that OpenAI and other better financed groups have avoided, and are starting to be called on. If second-generation operators have to license the content they need to stay updated, then that becomes a HUGE expense.
Without judging the merits of that claim, I just want to note, it's a new topic. It is related, in the sense that it is also a theory about why the social changes of the last three years must in the end be reversed. But I'm going to limit myself to arguing about one theory of that kind per day.
Let me know when you're ready to talk about the copyright stuff, and I'll be happy to jump in as a technologist AND book publisher AND general copyright nerd. ;-)
b) "Maintenance" is not a significant cost. Things can be tuned and updated at low cost. c) The trajectory of model size suggests that they will get *more* accessible on personal devices, not less so. Once we firmly set aside the vision of the future where things people are already doing become +
too expensive for anyone to do, I do agree with you that there are reasons to be concerned about oligopoly. Especially because the real value of these tools will emerge as they are integrated with things like operating systems and email systems, where oligopoly is already a problem.
This is the key point.. Oligopoly will take ultimate control [in this current world of Oligarchy] of GenAI as features/functions plateau. Particularly because there isn't anything proprietary about these foundation models. Just like email, OS etc
But I'm afraid the real appeal of the bubble theory is the tacit suggestion that "things individuals are currently doing are really unsustainable, and they will be forced to stop."
We're ALREADY seeing instances of where individuals are being forced to stop doing things due to the sustainability issues, so I wouldn't be so quick to categorically reject that could happen, as it already is. Whether this is an isolated incident or a canary in the coal mine is left to be seen.