The Google transformer paper was 2017. ChatGPT was the “we can give a version away of this for free.” Llama was “we can afford to give away the whole product for free to even the playing field.” Every tech giant comes out with a comparable product simultaneously. And now a hedge fund, not even a megacap company, can churn out a clone by hiring a small or medium size engineering team.

Really this should be an indictment of corporate bloat, having hundreds of thousand headcount companies distracted by performance reviews, shareholders, marketing, rebuilding the same product they launched two years ago under a new name.