An important take-away from this is the harness is really important. The graphs show that the same model with a better harness performs many percentage points better. OpenAI are getting into the "selling the harness" game in a big way. Why?
What's interesting about that is while not everybody can train or run a model, anybody can build a harness. You and I can build harnesses.
It seems strange that OpenAI would move into a field where any developer can compete with them. I think that tells us a lot about the economics of training and selling inference.
Basically, they can't afford to not compete. They also don't have to compete so hard, because they have the brand recognition.
I don't think it says what you imply. I think they're just trying to vertically integrate.
Harnesses are going to be controlled at companies eventually, just like you might not have a choice of OS. They want to make sure they are the complete package.
Yeah you're probably right, the purpose would be to lock in whole industry verticals.