I am not sure I understand your arguments. You seem to be taking both positions. I suspect that is because there are a few confounding variables and diverse needs AI solves and that makes a cohesive analysis hard to reach. I have a clear view that cuts through the complexity, whether you find it useful or persuasive is another matter but I’ll lay it out.
1. All intelligence has value. A Harvard MBA or Stanford CS engineer have value. Haiku has value, Opus has value.
2. Sometimes it makes sense to buy, build or rent capabilities. But lack of ownership of something your business requires to operate is an existential risk which requires ownership.
3. Current OSS models are good enough for substantial automation and productivity gains with the right orchestration and harness. Especially with domain experts in the loop.
4. Frontier models while better, introduce existential risk; so they are a temptation that should be ignored if you care about your business being able to continue to exist.
Let’s invert this conclusion. Imagine you build a workflow around Fable 5 and the workflow going down would harm your business. Well the government has demonstrated ability and willingness to impose a multi day / week / month interruption in your business with no legally required notice, right to appeal or compensation. And further demonstrates a willingness to give preferential access to your competitors.
For these reasons, the only viable path is a model you have on servers you control and can replace if needed. That means cloud providers are fine if you have the model archived somewhere.