Model specialization is in all likelihood going to be the way forward, both for cost and quality of output. Smaller, cheaper models specialized in their task domains. Many of the current model vendors are already (attempting) to do this under the hood.
Generalist models have similar problems as generalist humans. The proverbial "Jack of all trades, master of none."
Anyone trying to decide which of 30 different specialized models best fits their task has already failed.
Maybe the future of the backend is specialized models but the future of what faces the user is what appears to be a generalist model. Maybe it does things itself, maybe it just knows how to route to the specialist models, but the UX of a generalist model will win.
Users shouldn't be picking models directly at all, unless they really want to (almost no one does), but certainly some will.
I meant more automatic selection and negotiation of which model gets which task based on filtering criteria, etc. so happening under the hood as you say.
Generalist models have similar problems as generalist humans. The proverbial "Jack of all trades, master of none."
That said, I've made my career as a generalist :)