Comment by w10-1

"how long does a frontier model need to stay competitive"

Remember "worse is better". The model doesn't have to be the best; it just has to be mostly good enough, and used by everyone -- i.e., where switching costs would be higher than any increase in quality. Enterprises would still be on Java if the operating costs of native containers weren't so much cheaper.

So it can make sense to be ok with losing money with each training generation initially, particularly when they are being driven by specific use-cases (like coding). To the extent they are specific, there will be more switching costs.