Yeah, I really think we are on the cusp on the difference between SOTA and cheap models is small enough that paying 10x or 100x the cost makes no sense.
It also helps that a lot of effort has already been spent figuring out how to do more with weaker models because SOTA 1 year ago was behind what the cheap models do today.
1 year from now, unless the SOTA companies come up with something truly revolutionary they will be in a lot of trouble.
Which is why they are just making sure we can't buy any GPU to use any models. And because GPUs are so costly, I would be just worried to ruin it running a model continuously.
Yeah, might be far fetched, but it seems like heading that way
(I think you're right)