I didn't find this very convincing. Especially the argument around artificially low cost -- we know that training the next model is the biggest cost for these companies, and we've already seen inference costs fall drastically (https://epoch.ai/data-insights/llm-inference-price-trends).

Yes, Dario has publicly stated that models are already profitable if you exclude R&D for the next model.

Even if that’s not true, given that hardware and software efficiency gains can be expected to continue it’s likely that this is the most expensive the current level of intelligence will ever be.

The frontier models may increase in price, but only because they’re also more capable. If you hold intelligence constant, price should fall over time.