Yesterday’s frontier is today’s commodity, so I don't think frontier AI is out of reach. With computing and solar energy costs continuing to drop, the current AI supply shortages are just a temporary blip. We’ll probably land right back in standard boom-and-bust cycles.

But it is not a constant point of "this % of people needs the frontier intelligence".

As thje models get better, the % of the pie gets smaller and smaller. So higher and higher cost of getting frontier model out gets divided onto smaller and smaller customer base as other models catch up

I’m not sure if this counts as a nitpick, but the definition of frontier automatically includes the cheapest models

The market for "frontier intelligence" will be too small to serve outside of certain government/military applications that exist in spite of market forces, in the same way that the market for small, portable nuclear reactors is exclusively limited to submarines and aircraft carriers. When I call a plumber, I don't need a frontier plumber, I just need someone who's baseline competent.

there is definitely an asymptote

Non-frontier intelligence has become a commodity already.

And the success of things like ESP32 shows that good price + good enough is a powerful combination.