The problem is that AI research is moving incredibly fast. You might train a LLN today for $5M but a year from now the competition will have implemented an absolutely killer feature that needs $10M worth of training
AI research isn't particularly expensive. US$10 million to train a new model? Other fields have R&D budgets measured in the billions. I bet if you were a senior researcher at OpenAI, and you decided to quit and start a competing firm, there'd be a whole line of investors wanting to give you a lot more than US$10 million.
And you don't need to be coming first in the technology race to make money. A lot of people would be willing to pay for something ChatGPT-level with less restrictions on use. And then next year OpenAI will come out with something even more advanced, and they'll ask themselves "do I want a 2023-level solution which I'm free to use as I like, or a 2024-level solution with all these strings attached?", and many of them will decide the former is superior to the latter.
Maybe GPT-10 will cost US$10 billion to train? Anything could happen. Even if it does, the US government will ban China from using it, and then Beijing will spend US$10 billion to clone it. Even 10 billion isn't that much money if we are talking about nation-states pursuing their national interests, like not being left behind in the AI arms race. And then maybe China will outcompete OpenAI by offering an equivalent product but with far less limitations on how you use it.
Agree completely. The state of the art is probably going to always be closed and proprietary, but, especially with hardware becoming more and more powerful, training a custom model is not going to be beyond the budget and capabilities of even small organizations.
And you don't need to be coming first in the technology race to make money. A lot of people would be willing to pay for something ChatGPT-level with less restrictions on use. And then next year OpenAI will come out with something even more advanced, and they'll ask themselves "do I want a 2023-level solution which I'm free to use as I like, or a 2024-level solution with all these strings attached?", and many of them will decide the former is superior to the latter.
Maybe GPT-10 will cost US$10 billion to train? Anything could happen. Even if it does, the US government will ban China from using it, and then Beijing will spend US$10 billion to clone it. Even 10 billion isn't that much money if we are talking about nation-states pursuing their national interests, like not being left behind in the AI arms race. And then maybe China will outcompete OpenAI by offering an equivalent product but with far less limitations on how you use it.