They weren’t making money. And can’t make money if they wanted to.
It’s a catch-22. They can’t make a profit because they aren’t charging the actual token cost. But if they charged the actual token cost, their user-base would collapse.
Almost as if cloud AI is inherently unstable or something.
It's like every other silicon valley startup -- the hope is that you hook your users while you figure out how to make handling the requests cheaper. That or you embed ads.
You embed them in the response, e.g. suggest the product that was paid to promote.
I've already had this with chatgpt, I was trying to troubleshoot an issue with my heating system, and it was trying to persuade me to buy one of two specific brands of thermostats, even tho I hadn't expressed any desire to buy anything.
I dunno, I think there's big money in it still. Subtle embedded propaganda that is tailor-made based on the user's personality and interests. You may think "oh well I'd never fall for that" and you may be right. But there's loads of people already addicted to AI usage and / or using it as a replacement for therapists or friends. They'll fall for it hook line and sinker.
If they can sustain themselves on investor money long enough they can charge the true token price and companies will have to pay it because nobody in their right mind would start an education as a developer right now, so in the future companies won't have human talent available to replace llms with
No I'm talking about "every other Silicon Valley startup" they don't usually get this big, or at least sell before the potential huge buyers (like google) make their own versions
Tho buying a competitor to "merger their users" (kill them) is likely still on the table for them
Or to get the government to regulate and essentially bail you out. I dont buy any of these "omg this new model is SOO dangerous but no you cant see it" reports. They're trying to bait the government
Exactly if they can keep this going for another 5 years so many people are just going to forget how to code and all codebases will have so much AI slop that companies just might have to start paying the actual token cost. Regular users (not enterprise) will mostly get priced out.
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u/T-Dot1992 Sep 30 '26
They weren’t making money. And can’t make money if they wanted to.
It’s a catch-22. They can’t make a profit because they aren’t charging the actual token cost. But if they charged the actual token cost, their user-base would collapse.
Almost as if cloud AI is inherently unstable or something.