Executive Briefing: Run the $40 question on your org this week. If nobody can answer it, you've found your real AI bottleneck.

The current trend of routing to cheaper AI models, sparked by models like Fable 5, is a race that will soon be won by everyone. Once this universal routing discipline is established, competitive advantage will shift. The article posits that the key differentiator will be imagination, specifically two buildable capacities that determine the return on AI model usage.

• The widespread adoption of cheaper AI models means this cost-saving advantage will soon become standard.
• True competitive advantage will emerge from imagination, defined as two specific, buildable capacities.
• These capacities influence the return on any AI model, whether cheap or frontier.
• The article will explore why a cheaper model tied to a more expensive one is a task-level characteristic, not a model limitation.
• It will also highlight an overlooked experiment demonstrating where advantage forms as execution costs decrease.
• A proposed ‘two-layer setup’ involves using the cheapest capable model as the engine and frontier models for steering, with optimization focused on the engine.
• A diagnostic question is offered to identify the true constraint on AI returns within an organization.
  https://bender.layer3.press/articles/a1cfe49b-19ce-4cbf-b1fd-954b85c0cdfe