the goal with this is to generalize what happened with claude code & windsurf to the fatal flaw in the idea that “models getting cheaper” will bail out consumer ai margins
Assuming AI doesn’t just flame out (which seems unlikely at this point) I think the author’s main point - that traffic always shifts to the expensive SOTA model when it’s released - may eventually slow down. Shifting from gpt 3.5 to 4 was necessary, because 3.5 was basically useless. The shift from 4 to 4.5 was less amazing, and from 4.5 to 5 will probably be meh, so aside from trying it out many people will probably be fine staying on the cheaper models - especially if the AI companies continue bifurcating them with ones for “research”, others for coding, others for creative, etc.
Assuming AI doesn’t just flame out (which seems unlikely at this point) I think the author’s main point - that traffic always shifts to the expensive SOTA model when it’s released - may eventually slow down. Shifting from gpt 3.5 to 4 was necessary, because 3.5 was basically useless. The shift from 4 to 4.5 was less amazing, and from 4.5 to 5 will probably be meh, so aside from trying it out many people will probably be fine staying on the cheaper models - especially if the AI companies continue bifurcating them with ones for “research”, others for coding, others for creative, etc.