Large language models may not stay a revolution. They may become infrastructure, the way the database did, used everywhere and noticed by nobody.
In 1994 the database was the most exciting technology in the building. Oracle, Sybase, Informix and IBM competed on benchmarks. The pitch was that you would put every record your company had into one engine and ask it anything. Keynotes drew crowds. Careers were built on the choice of platform. The company that queried best would win.
Thirty-two years later the database has won and disappeared. It runs every application you used today, and nobody writes about it. It is a line in a configuration file. You pick it once, forget it, and think about it again when it breaks. The same description could fit a model in 2036.
But look at who won. Sybase was bought by SAP and went quiet. Informix was bought by IBM and became a footnote. Oracle is still here, mostly as an invoice. Neither of the engines that actually won was in the 1994 race. PostgreSQL became the default, and it is an open project rather than a product. SQLite runs inside every phone, browser and app, roughly a trillion copies, and you have never configured it.
Nobody chose them. The engines that ended up everywhere were not the ones being argued about.
If models follow the same path, the launch is the wrong thing to watch. Watch for the SQLite, the one that wins without being chosen.
This is not a prediction. Important and exciting are different things, and most technology moves from the second to the first. The database did. Electricity did. Maybe models are partway. Maybe the comparison is wrong. Nobody knows.