The word "pacing" (especially in the phrase "pace yourself") to mean go more slowly (at least initially) didn't originate with Covid. It's been around as long as I remember i.e. at least several decades.

I guess I understand why we'd want to flatten a COVID curve, but why do people want to flatten the LLM development curve? Don't we want the opposite? Isn't the goal AGI?

This is a preexisting model being optimized. Its absolutely not some unexpected release after that blog post. I won't defend that blog post, but saying THIS release is proof they don't mean they are slowing down is just incorrect, this is a prime example of what i consider horizontal improvements

Releasing a new fable is an example of straight up vertical progress, releasing a more efficient preexisting opus that is more affordable is an example of horizontal progress, more efficient models rather than higher power models.

The blog post about slowing down is still just some weird self interested post, they want to govern themselves and impose distillation restrictions/gpu restrictions and used some weird blog post about slowing down and fear mongering as usual to justify it, its strange, but slowing down and stopping are not the same thing at all.