> There is no reason for the models to stop their improvements in the near future.
Sure there is.
1. The cost of each new generation of training runs appears to be rapidly rising
2. The Trump admin just told the leading model to stop making it available to non-Americans, which in practice meant stop providing it at all
3. The factories to make the hardware are hitting bottlenecks, and while they've currently been navigated around, there's never a guarantee the next one will be
Currently I'm wondering at what point the direct impact on the US energy supply gives the US a taste of Baumol's cost disease as AI companies continue to outbid everyone else for electricity.
There are some counters to this, especially in electricity. We'll see massive expansions of wind and solar in the US because of this. Both the speed of install and low costs will guarantee it.
As long as Chinese companies keep pushing on, so must US companies too.
It would not surprise me at all if we suddenly start seeing top US AI companies lobby against Chinese models, or even the gov. making it illegal to use Chinese AI models.
But in this day and age, I just don't think it is possible. A distant third option would be that the big AI companies try to make hardware so expensive that people simply can't run their own models, while blocking access to foreign models.