The ChatGPT beta launched in 2022 with GPT 3.5 and 4 years later we have strong models from a bevy of organizations. It's as if Google launched in 1998 and by 2002 there were a dozen search engines competitive with or better than the original Google.

One of the common tasks LLMs are being trained to do is write software, which includes writing software for developing LLMs. That's reducing the cost to build alternative models and to run the ones that have already been trained and released. Many of these models aren't from America at all, so American billionaires don't get to decide how they're used. The competition is fiercer, and the potential for American monopolies or oligopolies is lower, than with technological waves of the recent past (e.g. mobile phone operating systems, search engines, social networking sites).