If anything, I would bet that next year you could get today’s flagship performance for significantly cheaper via an open-weights model.
Open-source models have caught up tremendously recently. Those who can’t or don’t want to invest a lot of money can already develop with Kimi and GLM without any problems. We don’t have to wait another year for that.
From experience, the same level of usage would have left me stranded on my CC 5 hr limit within an hour.
There were some difficulties with tool calls, in particular with replacing tab-indented strings - but taking no steps to mitigate that (which meant the model had to figure it out every time I cleared context) only cost relatively few extra tokens -- and it still came in well under 4.6, nevermind 4.7. And of course, I can add instructions to prevent churning on those issues.
I have no reason to go back to anthropic models with these results.
"No moat" indeed.
I expect tomorrow’s models will be so much more capable that we will happily pay more.
But if not, we will still likely get today’s capabilities or more for cheap.
I don’t see a realistic scenario in which the AI genie is going back into the bottle because of affordability.
It seems like wishful thinking by people who dislike the new paradigm in software engineering.
(Timeframes are hyperbolical).
I'm not all gloom and doom but the treatment of junior engineers is something I think we will either regret or rejoice. Either will have a spur of creative people doing their own independent thing or we'll have lost a generation of great engineers.
We’ve been coasting along on a single generation who have ruled with iron fists.
If you fire all your SWEs they won't sit around twiddling their thumbs waiting for an AI collapse, they'll career shift. Maybe to an unemployment line and/or homelessness, maybe to something else productive, but either way they'll lose SWE skills.
If you close down all the SWE junior positions you'll strongly discourage young people training in the field. They'll do something else.
Then if you want to go back, who will you hire for it?
They are large language models. Not automated development machines. They hallucinate.
The goal post has not shifted since 2023 or so. Make an LLM that doesn't blatantly disregard knowledge it has, instructions it has been giving, over and over, and you win. If trillions of USD of investment can't do it, I'd be curious to see what can.
If the AI is not good enough, then don't fire the devs. If/when the devs are no longer needed, I don't see why the need would return later, that was my point.
The consumer space is about extracting every ounce of personal data possible.
The b2b space is about "maximizing customer value" - that is, not maximizing the value of your product to the customer, but maximizing the value of the customer to your business. Lock them in and lock them down, make your product "sticky" so they can't leave without immense cost.
Company brain drain, knowledge leaves with your seniors if you decide to get rid of them, or they just leave due to the conditions AI creates.
I don't know if the above comes to fruition, there's a lot of questions that only time will answer. But those are my first thoughts.