They simply want control over the rollout of their product and how it is used. That, and perhaps opening the flood gates would produce scaling bottlenecks they’d rather stay ahead of than get behind.
So they open things carefully, pull back when necessary like when they limited use of the public GPT-4 version of ChatGPT. That doesn’t seem too unreasonable. And yes sure, some amount of it might be attempts to manufacture scarcity to increase the hype. It’s an old tactic and hardly comparable to Soviet Russia.
There's no scaling issues to speak of. These AIs are stateless, which makes them embarrassingly parallel. They can always just throw more GPUs at it. Microsoft even had some videos where they bragged about how these models can be run on any idle GPU around the world, dynamically finding resources wherever it is available!
If there's not enough GPUs at a certain price point, raise prices. Then lower prices later when GPUs become available.
More GPUs currently don't exist. Nvidia is at capacity for production, and they have to compete with other companies who are also bidding on these GPUs. It's not an issue of raising the price point. The GPUs they want to buy have to be purchased months in advance.
Yes I was anthropomorphising it back into the realm of human emotion, wherein the angles at which one’s lines run need not be a source of emotional distress. Excepting perhaps the innate sadness of two parallel lines destined to ever be at each other’s sides but still never to meet across the infinite plane.
So they open things carefully, pull back when necessary like when they limited use of the public GPT-4 version of ChatGPT. That doesn’t seem too unreasonable. And yes sure, some amount of it might be attempts to manufacture scarcity to increase the hype. It’s an old tactic and hardly comparable to Soviet Russia.