- The user compares AI model pricing, noting that DeepSeek V4 is much cheaper than Anthropic and OpenAI's 'frontier' models, with a nearly 50x price difference based on tokens.
- There's concern that Anthropic and OpenAI have high costs and may not be able to reduce prices significantly to compete with cheaper models like DeepSeek or Xiaomi's Mimo.
- The user questions if lower costs for some models are due to being open-weight and stress-tested by many users, or if they're offered as loss leaders to drive prices down.
- It's suggested that OpenAI and Anthropic maintain high prices by manufacturing scarcity, using luxury branding, and gating access to 'frontier' models as status symbols.
- There's a fear that Anthropic and OpenAI might use China-related fears to push for bans on open-weight models, thereby restricting competition through government intervention.
- The user expresses hope for open-source competition from the US, mentioning examples like Google's Gemma 4, Meta's llama, and Allen AI's OLMO models, which have data cutoffs in Dec 2024.
- A leapfrog scenario for open source is predicted where true open-source models include open-sourced data pipelines for training, as seen in the NSF-Nvidia partnership with Allen AI.