AI has been a story of over-promising and under-delivering since the 1950s, with most products being niche, protracted, or domain-specific. In the past decade, most people have focused on more profitable endeavors. However, the AI frontier is being driven by a much smaller fraction of the ecosystem than former technological shifts. ChatGPT, Claude, and Bard are examples of this. With a sudden phase change driven by very few people, many technologists fear that the new world we’re entering will leave them behind, creating hyperbolic narratives around foundation model FUD, open source outperformance, and more.
