All it needs is Internet access to remain useful with few shortcomings.

The next step would be automatic self-training. A free LLM that could access HN everyday (and the linked sites) for more data would remain current in programming for a really long time.

imo this is the problem some of these labs are gonna face, because open models will do this just fine and you as the consumer don't need to pay their training costs

especially considering imo most use falls under this instead of those kind of tasks where you'd need the SOTA

I share this feeling too. The latest models, even if not necessarily frontier, say Opus 5, Sol high and the likes, I could keep using these models forever even if they did not significantly improve beyond this point. I also believe we'll come up with new ways of using these very same models beyond the mainstream chat and agent interfaces, as the bottleneck is imho in harnesses/environments and not so much model intelligence anymore.

+1 regarding voice usage too, I use it in so many different ways it's hard to enumerate: while driving long distances (think of a custom made, interactive podcast) / as a way to collaboratively build specs or shape an idea / as a way to provide input while vibe coding / just as a normal voice assistant (straight in the ChatGPT app or as OpenClaw input via telegram voice notes). I can't overstate how much my routines have changed over the last couple of years.