The equilibrium of the best LLM models being available via API seems meta-stable to me.
- The equilibrium of the best LLM models being available via API seems meta-stable to me.
- You could imagine an alternate universe where ChatGPT got popular before OpenAI had released a public completion API.
- In that world, OpenAI would likely reserve their model for their own 1P product.
- Other leading models from Anthropic and Google likely would have done the same.
- But luckily we live in the world where OpenAI had already released their API before ChatGPT got big.
- Because they set that precedent, the other top model providers also added a public API.
- Now, if any one of the providers got rid of their API, their competitors would push forward and scoop up the market share.
- The only way we'd lose public APIs is if they all moved in unison.
- This dynamic is roughly stable because the quality of the models is in the same general ballpark.
- Each provider would rather have[lw] the APIs be closed but none have the quality differential to close it unanimously.
- These kinds of historical accidents can change the arc of history.
- Apparently the fact that Netscape left "View Source" in the shipped browser was not necessarily intentional.
- But that expectation of view source and remixing became baked into the perception of what a browser was and how the web worked.