[runarberg]

> competition drives price decreases

This is something that is often cited as trueism, but there is no natural laws which makes this a necessary true. There is plenty of room for black swans in market laws. So much so that the term black swan is probably better known in the field of economy then any other field.

Competition may drive down the price of LLMs, however there is a greater then zero probability that it won‘t, and if it won’t, your whole counter-argument falls apart.

[beachy]

I can't think of any high volume/consumer electronics/computer technology that has not been driven down in price over time. So based on historical precedent, I think your "greater than zero probability" might be only a tiny bit greater than zero.

[runarberg]

xkcd did one about graphic calculators

https://xkcd.com/768/

But other that comes to mind are MRI scanners, superconductors, quantum computers.

I think in general this market law is subject to selection bias. The technology which does decrease in price will become commonplace and easy to find, whereas the technology which doesn’t risks becoming obscure and maybe even removed from consumer markets.

EDIT: just to clarify, the point about black swans is that the prediction is always close to 0 probability of the existence of black swans, until we actually observe one, then the probability is suddenly exactly 1. If LLMs are a black swan for this market law, most people will assign a close to 0 probability ... until they don’t.

[beachy]

Oops my bad formatting - instead of "high volume/consumer electronics/computer technology" I meant to say "high volume consumer electronics/computer technology" which would have ruled out those examples. But your other point is true, there are always shortages of MRI scanners.