Fair point, the first few gens weren't that expensive. And like I said I'm certain the scaling would've been discovered soon with some time lag. But the transformer paper was 2017, right? Just from a benefit -to- society perspective, assuming LLMs are a net positive in terms of productivity, perhaps reducing time to drug approval or improving government efficiency (1).. Isn't getting there just one year earlier worth it, if the gains really are that big? We could be talking lives saved via faster approvals or more efficient spending. My point is that a private company made it happen faster, as evidenced by them doing it first. A good thing sooner is valuable.

(1) I'm convinced at the very least LLMs can feasibly speed up paperwork.