AI successes

[FishFright]

It's been posted elsewhere that AI will soon get a lot more expensive. I don't know why.

Is this true? Will it affect the casual user of Ch*tG*t, or the AI on Search Engines?

Maybe because they are all running at a huge loss?

 

[Rusty Nails]

Maybe because they are all running at a huge loss?

It's like a loss leader and giant user test base at the same time.

 

[Pblakeney]

It's like a loss leader and giant user test base at the same time.

…as well as data scraping.

 

[stowie]

It's been posted elsewhere that AI will soon get a lot more expensive. I don't know why.

Is this true? Will it affect the casual user of Ch*tG*t, or the AI on Search Engines?

It is not a certainty that AI usage will get more expensive, but as others have said, AI companies are burning through cash like Imelda Marcos in a shoe shop and at some stage the investors providing said cash might want to have a glimmer of hope at some kind of return.

Between 95-97% of AI usage is via the free tiers currently offered. That is one hell of a customer base currently not paying for the service. Optimists would point to a huge latent pool of users that could be monetised but pessimists might wonder how many of that 95% would actually be prepared to pay for it or simply go back to google search etc. In fact, established companies like Google could be in the best position with these customers since their AI search is integrated into their already successfully monetised platform so could continue with a free user tier. I think the bet of Anthropic/OpenAI/etc. is that casual users will be prepared to pay something for the service, they will also be able to monetise the enquiries somehow and that existing subscribers will willingly pay more for current service levels. I could be being cynical, but I do think the model may be getting companies hooked on AI for development and when they have lost their human knowledge through redundancy to start whacking up the prices. It could be said that any company executive willing to hand over core company IP development to a third party whilst getting rid of the human store of knowledge might deserve such a business model. But if this is the case, it relies on these companies getting "hooked" on the AI model before the AI company burns through the whole cash pile and that is very far from certain.


The AI world is moving very fast, and I won't be surprised if the big winners in 10 years are not the companies we know now. For example, people using AI for specific knowledge areas are starting to look at smaller, more directed models which may be able to be run on premise equipment to ensure security. As it was put to me, why would an AI model which is being used by a law firm need to be able to answer questions around Harry Potter films? And, more importantly, a directed model could be more accurate and less likely to base a law argument on, for example, something it learned from Reddit...

And then there is the thorny issue of customer lock-in. In the technology / software world, people will jump from one AI vendor to another pretty quickly based on model accuracy for the task and price. It could quickly become a race to the bottom with thin margins and then paying huge cash for gigantic datacentres would appear far riskier than now.

In summary of a long, rambling post, expect AI companies to try to charge more people more money for their services. And don't bet on the people to deciding to pay it.