Switching LLM providers as a company is not, once all your employees have it integrated with GitHub, their IDE, etc.

Speaking as someone who has been at professionally this since the 1980s, I suggest that while sometimes switching costs and network effects happen "organically," in this century businesses devote enormous amounts of attention to artificially building switching costs.

It's such a dirty practice that we have a four-letter word for it, a "moat." But of course, the moat isn't really to keep competitors out of a market, it's actually to keep customers trapped within it.

I fully expect every one of these AI providers to put as much work into trying to trap their customers within their ecosystem that they do to improve their capabilities.

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tob_scott_a an hour ago | parent | next [-]

LLMs make it easier to bypass the moat, too. They can automate migrations, etc. pretty smoothly.

(Since we're talking about moats and cyber-feudalism, where does siege warfare come in?)

	▲	Lvl999Noob 2 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Since siege warfare is about bringing down the fortifications and a moat is part of those fortifications, cyber siege may be something akin to patent trolling or IP copyrights? Fire off dozens or hundreds of claims against your target and drown them in legal costs.

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zobzu 15 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

they haven't really done that so far. no offense but LLMs didn't exist in the 80. or 90. or 6y ago. and I'm just as old as you.