I've said this before on my blog, but the new metaphor I've been using is drug development.

It costs billions to develop a drug (model) and pennies to produce the actual pill (tokens).

The government regulates the drug industry to give companies an exclusive period to recoup the costs before generics can jump in.

AI lacks that regulation which means frontiers are guaranteed to just bleed to death.

The current system in healthcare hurts consumers. We certainly do not want the same system in AI.

Frontier AI is a business to be “the smartest guy in the room”. It will always be hyper competitive just because of that.

The fate of any individual frontier company is irrelevant. What matters is AI consumers, and broad accessibility of AI to those consumers. If one of the AI “frontiers” bites the dust, the next one will step right in.

> The government regulates the drug industry to give companies an exclusive period to recoup the costs before generics can jump in.

Sorry, no bailouts. Whatever drug companies negotiate, they do it in advance, it's called a deal. The purpose of regulation cannot be "recouping the costs" of everyone who's just figured out that they can't make it the way they've promised. If it was, everyone and their dog would ask for recouping the costs of dog poop management.

> AI lacks that regulation which means frontiers are guaranteed to just bleed to death.

The lack of such regulation actually means that frontiers should slow down spending money they don't have in order to avoid bleeding themselves to death... what a novel idea, ha?