It's a tricky line to walk.
On the one hand, you are absolutely right that ability to hobble over a few feet from your chair does not mean the chair is obviously not needed.
On the other, wheelchairs are a very popular prop for grifting folks.
It's pretty damn near impossible to make an informed judgement on such a matter in an instant, and lots of people do exploit that.
In terms of whether the 'clean room' approach is as critical in Europe or not, I can't be sure. It might be more permissable for someone to use a decompile as a reference and also directly work on a replacement. However I'm pretty sure starting with a decompile of proprietary software as a direct codebase would run afoul of issues.
Otherwise, imagine you have an HEVC encoded rip of a 4K blu ray. You transcode it to AV1. The bytes are totally different, and even the resultant frames are likely not even pixel for pixel identical. I don't think copyright law would deem that not a violation, regardless of jurisdiction.
Providers like MS at least should have figured out that the hypothetical ability to take your data "to go" is important, but nothing they need to worry about being actually used too much, especially in businesses.
One is the anxiety over screwing up and losing your data when you solely manage it. So huge pressure to use "a" reputable company as a steward of the data.
Another is that the user and the spend are disconnected in business scenarios. If attaching a 'cloud' document to something in the app is two clicks, but 4 clicks to do the same from desktop, then the users will want to just stick to the cloud to save them a few clicks at least. They will demand their IT provide microsoft solutions and the IT will shrug and say "well, everyone gets microsoft solutions". Back in the day my company tried to split the difference by purchasing perpetual licenses only for every third edition. Now Microsoft has made that just not viable so you either just pay for as long as you use it or you go elsewhere.
It's also why I don't think any of the providers are actually trying to screw up desktop component prices for fear of local models ruining their day. The tech market has shown they actively jump at the chance to surrender their flexibility to providers, no need to worry about them suddenly deciding to in-house things.
Microsoft already changed what they are selling. Now they are renting document storage that happens to have document modification software integrated.
They long decided that owning access to the data was more leverage than the software used to edit it. Ditto for Adobe. Pretty much immediately software as a service encouraged "don't worry about ever saving/managing your data" and it wasn't about user convenience...
You are right no one cares how it is implemented, and on select contexts, right that LLMs can produce sufficient implementation.
However it isn't generally the case that they can produce quality software. The bad news for a lot of developers is that by volume most software isn't exactly great quality either, particularly in house enterprise software is already crap, so there is large area where differently crapi isn't so bad.
I will say that people who want their software well supported are likely to be ill served by "vibed" solutions. It is really tricky to debug complex software that was vibed, whether human or GenAI. If it worked perfectly the first time around and/or the software in question is fairly disposable, well those may be fine.
Well, depends.
Software is subject to copyright. Yes you can implement the same APIs, but when you get into the visual presentation, things can get copyright related even if the code isn't being ripped off.
If you decompile rather than clone, well then the code is copyrighted even if transformed into plausible source code.
Of course then there are patents...
Possibilities include the current companies surviving, but after financial catastrophes, some falling completely, and getting absorbed or superseded by big players (e.g. if Anthropic ended up somehow financially vulnerable, Microsoft might slurp them up, or Microsoft decides to do their own initiatives in earnest).
Yeah, random stuff happens and normal people don't assume something like a pregnant mistress.
One time someone left a few roses under my windshield at work on valentine's day. I assume someone mistook my car for someone else's, not that I had some secret admirer who wanted to do a pointlessly anonymous gesture.
One time someone let out the air from one of my tires overnight in my driveway, for no apparent reason and it caused me mild annoyance.
Anyway, fake internet story for fake internet points.
This may be the reality, but in theory the answer is for people to say "fuck working for these asshats if we are stuck at the mercy of caprcious users tipping".
I would argue there is no ethical way to use them.
He didn't mean to question the premise that the consumer market is being starved, he was highlighting the reality of that and connecting it as being motivated by a fear of local models.
Admittedly, the question was ambiguous and could be taken either way, but the comment didn't mention that consumer market was starved, his question brought it into the discussion.
Note that I don't think that it is fear of local models personally, I think it's fear of each other. I think cloud infrastructure providers already proved that even when people can locally host stuff, they mostly don't. So many consumer electronics could meet their promises all locally, but still force the users to connect to their internet services. The tech market has already proven time and time again they are suckers for subscription eshitification, no need to panic over it being different for AI.
A bubble burst is not necessarily 'the end' of a tech. The internet bubble burst back in 2000, and here we are.
A lot of the financial burden is offloaded to SPVs that may well be allowed to fail, as the AI companies don't directly carry the liabilities. They certainly carry enough of them, but they have done a lot to manage to leave other entitites holding the bag. Government may happily let Anthropic fold if it came to it, because Trump is all pissy with them. SpaceX would depend on whether Trump is pissed or loving Elon in the moment of decision. Hell if Trump decided that 'TrumpAI' was a possible concept he'd probably let them all burn for the chance of his grift picking up the pieces.
How relatable, being able to not care about what precisely you are buying and how much it costs and letting an AI just spend a few hundred dollars without you even knowing whatever the hell it was.
If trying to show getting a gift, way to show that thoughfulness of fobbing off the whole process to a bot.