How much does a simple price ticker snapshot truly tell us about where programming model leadership actually sits?
In practice, our colleagues at a local factory who tried to shift their automated quality control system from one AI model to another faced huge integration costs and weeks of re-training.
It's not just about the prompt price; it's the full operational friction and the human effort involved, which is a major invalidation of any quick-change theory.
Changing a system isn't like picking a cheaper coffee; it's a significant project trigger that needs real resources.
A price snapshot is just one small piece of the puzzle, not the whole picture of why models get adopted or dropped.