This is pretty much false. There's a lot of art and technique that goes into creating a model. A model is also clearly not fungible - it has certain characteristics and behaves a certain way. It is fungible in the same way humans are fungible.

> Access to compute could be the differentiator.

Already is the differentiator even with the models we have now.

For all that the local models have improved (and Qwen 3.8 27b is still impressing me) they aren't what you can run if you have an entire data center stuffed with H200's.

All this does is further widen the divide we already know exists by those with access to resources using them to increase their access to resources and those without getting to watch because there isn't much they can do without resources.

I was of the same opinion but the main difference is that models get better which I am not sure you have a correspondent in utilities (what would get better?). The barrier of entry in utilities is capital. Here there seems to be more. Why is Grok behind and why is Gemini so ... what's the word? If models progress reach the RSI point there is no parallel to utilities imo.

It seems like the barrier to entry is access to right of ways. Google learned this the hard way.

Less an utility and more like foodstuff.

You have your boiled potatoes/rice/beans (small local models), steak (Opus 5.5), wagyu (fable)

There are a lot of things that don't seem to have much moat like anyone can make a search engine, anyone can flip hamburgers but the likes of Google or McDonalds dominate by economies of scale and being better in some ways.

Those two are interesting analogies because neither was anything close to being first to market. In both cases, they ended up dominating because they brought some new ideas to existing businesses.

It would argue that the real winner in AI probably hasn't even been founded yet, but will come later once the trailblazers have created the market, and someone else enters with fresh ideas about how to more efficiently exploit the market.

The AI algorithms seem pretty crude at the moment like not learning from experience. A company doing it properly could easily displace the current AltaVistas.

I think we as an industry need to start getting serious about what a true superintelligence really is. True superintelligence will not be kept under our yoke.