The constant improvements of SOTA are the main thing keeping the investment machine running. We can't really remove training costs from inference costs, because a bunch of the funding and loans for the inference hardware only exists because the promises the continuous training (tries to) provides.

Not really. SOTA vs non SOTA is "can I get my coding work actually done today" vs. "this can do customer support chat"

It is like car vs. kick scooter.

It really isn't. We get coding work actually done today on Opus 4.5. That's not SOTA any more, and anything proximate to that level, even quite loosely, is genuinely useful.

OK we are in Opus 4.5 is not SOTA. Right by that definition .... yes you are right.

I mean its almost halve a year, i think that counts ?

Time wise you are correct.

> "can I get my coding work actually done today" vs. "this can do customer support chat"

I think you need to define "can get coding work done" for this to make sense. Ive been using GPT-3 back-then for basic scripts, does that count ? Or only Claude-Code ?

I also think this is a false dichotomy, if you look at the Project Vend project or Vending-Bench, customer support etc. is at no means trivial. (Old but great story https://www.businessinsider.com/car-dealership-chevrolet-cha...)

This, I have been doing my side hustle code with open code an 3.2 reasoner and it is way better than what I have at day job with copilot and whatever models are there.

Copilot is a bad harness that perverts the productivity of models like GPT 5.5.

Tell me more please!

Not really. The current SOTAs are already at the point that they can do that. The following models will start to surpass the daily work level. It's a diminishing returns situation just like anything else in tech.