You don't need to "replicate" Opus and Sonnet, you just need to match their overall performance at lower cost. That's been absolutely doable so far, with a steadily decreasing lag time.
That's a fair response. But I'm not aware of any metrics supporting the point that the lag time is decreasing. The discourse I've seen has more focused on the ways Claude/OpenAI/Google have pulled away from the rest of the pack.
To be clear, I accept you might be right, but I think the crux is whether lag time is increasing, steady or growing.
