Comment by TeMPOraL

I don't mean the companies are hoarding more powerful models (competition prevents that) - just that the existing models already make it too easy for individuals and companies to build and maintain ad-hoc, problem-specific versions of many commercial software services they now pay for. This is the source of people asking, why haven't AI companies themselves done this to a good chunk of software world. One hypothesis is that they're all gathering data from everyone using LLMs to power their business, in order to do just that. My alternative hypothesis is that they already could start burning through the industry, competing with whole classes of existing products and services, but they purposefully don't, because charging rent from existing players is more profitable than outcompeting them.