We already have a window into the future.
- Anthropic told everyone Mythos was dangerous because it's proficiency with biologics and cyber security
- Anthropic didn't release Mythos like everything else. They released a neutered fable. They didn't get rid of Mythos
- Anthropic opens a lab in SF
There was always a quesiton of "will the labs stop releasing their models and start building around them instead?" Yes - they already have. Anthropic is a biologic and cyber security company, in addition to intelligience.
Personally I wonder if they've been holding back a lot. Opus 5.5 was a good release after a little stagnation. Open AI releases good models and everyone says Anthropic sucks and -- Oh would you look at that - a better model finally and all of a sudden.
Yes, both labs already have monstrous internal teacher models they don't sell for inference, this is generally acknowledged. They cut releases for the public just to keep revenues growing, it's not their actual frontier.
The way it is right now is to build giga-monster models, use those internally to boost yourself, and distill them down into lighter consumer models.
Apparently OAI is already building GPT7 and GPT8