The only moat is in datacenters. The software has no moat, since 1) it's already trained on stolen data, and 2) someone with access to AI will be able to reverse engineer a proprietary implementation eventually, the same AI is being used for developing AI.
That's why so many talks about regulations. Regulations means: ban outside competition, just like US bans Chinese EVs today.
> Imagine the horror of the USSR, or Mao's China, or Jong Un having this technology.
The irony of this comment, while social media and AI are being weaponized right now in elections all over the world for political alignment with the MAGA kleptocracy.
These lessons made sense for users born before personal computers, but it's debatable if these lessons are transferable to so called "digital native" users.
I fear new models will eventually gain the ability to generate straight machine code, or some frontier lab will introduce their own compact (in terms of tokens) intermediate language as a competitive advantage, at which point "software development" will completely collapse, because:
1) humans won't write or understand code anymore, and current programming languages will be obsolete like COBOL
2) "open source" will be dead
3) developing software will necessarily mean relying subscribing for a model from a oligopoly
4) the AI labs will control what kind of software gets developed (including, not being able to use a model to develop a model) because it will be strongly regulated, citing security risks, China, or whatever
There are a thousand steps between models generating machine code and the future you envision, none of which is necessary, especially since there will be humans involved that will prefer alternatives.
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