> We will never know for sure, it is equally likely they did some cost savings which caused a reduction in quality.
That is entirely not equally likely, and would be completely unprecedented, at the frontier of an emerging technology that people are pumping the money and the future of the world into to win.
No matter how much money they pump into it there is a finite number of GPUs. Money can’t make GPUs appear out of thin air. If they’re faced with the choice of lowering quality slightly or turning away new customers, it shouldn’t be surprising if they choose lowering quality.
that sounds very naive to me, you think the "future of the world" matters to corporations making the business decision to save money and increase profit short-term? That idea is so alien to me we might as well live on a different planet.
The part that is unprecedented would be giving up an edge in a battle that will win you the world if you win the battle, by saving a few bucks. At the highest level (think OpenAI/Microsoft, Google) money is not going to be the lynchpin for a long, long time. This thing is too close to "forever good enough" at way too many things to lose your edge by being too clever by half.
That is entirely not equally likely, and would be completely unprecedented, at the frontier of an emerging technology that people are pumping the money and the future of the world into to win.