Physics and economics will drive cost. Current token pricing is based on unsustainable investment and energy cost. However, this is more of an optimization problem than an inherent show stopper. Token cost will inevitably come down over time. But this could take a while before it catches up with demand. Manufacturing will step up to provide cheaper GPUs. Etc. There will be some consolidation but the whole thing will converge on something that should make long term economical sense.

Ultimately it's a resource control issue. To power AI you need land/space (to build on), water, energy, and lots of hardware. Hardware needs to be manufactured and engineered. It needs metals, some exotic materials, machines, etc. More resources in other words. If you look at China vs US here, they are really well positioned in terms of resources and supply chains. The US has fallen behind quite a bit on energy and all the critical resources needed to produce hardware. AI is bottle necked on a lot of stuff that China has or makes in abundance.

For the frontier models, there are a growing number of companies and countries that provide them. We're used to mostly talking about the US ones. But of course the Chinese have a lot of capability here and they are not that far behind. And that's judging by the models they choose to release under OSS licenses. Those models are not their frontier models. And there are a lot of other countries developing and using models that aren't necessarily talking openly about what they are doing.

The irony with these frontier models is that they only generate revenue if people can use them. Why sink billions in AI infrastructure and models without a revenue model?

The reality with Mythos is that you have to assume that the Chinese (and others) are not that far behind and may already be running an equivalent model that they just haven't told anyone about yet. Anthropic gate keeping Mythos and its findings is probably wise. But it's not long term sustainable to depend on that happening or working very well. Or even on them even being a leader in this space.

This is becoming an arms race between countries, and economies. And it's an economical and resource control race. Developing and researching in the open has advanced things massively. But it has also empowered the rest of the world. Both Anthropic and OpenAI are staffed with people from all over the world. You have to assume that they probably aren't very good at keeping things secret.