I think the foundation models are a commodity, anyway. The bulk of the economic value, as usual, will be realized at the application layer. Building apps that use LLMs, including fine-tuning them for particular purposes, is well within reach even of indie/solo devs.
That’s why Sam Altman makes so much noise about “safety” - OpenAI would really like a government-backed monopoly position so they can charge higher rents and capture more of that value for themselves. Fortunately, I think that llama has already left the barn.
I think openai/anthropic/etc are banking on foundation models being the equivalent of the "datacenters" or AWS-equivalents of AI - there'll be PaaSes (eg replicate), and most businesses will just pay the "rent"
That’s why Sam Altman makes so much noise about “safety” - OpenAI would really like a government-backed monopoly position so they can charge higher rents and capture more of that value for themselves. Fortunately, I think that llama has already left the barn.