Is that margin enough to cover the NRE of model development? Every pro-AI argument hinges on the models continuing to improve at a near-linear rate

Yeah but the argument people make is that when the music stops cost of inference goes through the roof.

I could imagine that when the music stops, advancement of new frontier models slows or stops, but that doesn't remove any curent capabilities.

(And to be fair the way we duplicate efforts on building new frontier models looks indeed wasteful. Tho maybe we reach a point later where progress is no longer started from scratch)