I think Paul lives in Britain these days.

I think he does, but it seems he still considers himself a remote SV native rather than someone working in the UK's economy.

Worst of both worlds - no casual gossip feed in the Bay Area, no big dog meetings in the UK. (Which mostly has no idea he exists.)

As for the question - what are the odds LLMs will be anywhere near the top of the tech tree five years from now?

The trend seems pretty clear to me - local/offshore models are snapping at the heels of the big names in the US, and the current investment arc is insane.

I wouldn't bet on Anthropic or OpenAI being leaders five years from now. Longer term, I especially wouldn't bet on the US build-yourself-a-monopoly corporate model surviving AI at all.