Like a coke dealer telling their custies there's no more freebies you gotta pay full amount for a good time. Oh wait that's basically the 80s

It's like having a subscription to your own codebase

The number of comments that don’t understand that the cost for providing software, even as a service, and the cost for providing LLM inference aren’t in any way similar is way too high. The next user on software costs basically nothing to the company selling it. The margin on the next token of LLM inference is still likely negative. When you add in the cost of training, it gets ruinous.

This isn’t about screwing customers, it’s about trying like hell to stay alive. The money pump isn’t running and the tap is starting to lose pressure. Soon, it’ll be dribbling out the last few cents of VC money. Because this stuff is not worth the cost of producing it.

I've seen coworkers so married to this tech they're having it read our company emails.

I remember the last time that Anthropic and OpenAI started charging customers a bunch more for tokens. I think that went really well for them.

They are like drug dealers.

You get the product cheap, until you're addicted.
Then you pay.

I never understood the limits when I paid for a Claude Pro account. I was happier using the free service. Hitting a weekly limit on Claude Pro vs hitting a daily limit for the free service
🤯

All of this shit is PREDICTABLE. But they need AI to predict it.

Wait... Token cost anthropic money? Token cost money? Its not just magic created with a spell? WAAAIT!!!! TOKEN COST ELECTRICITY AND WEARDOWN ON REAL HARDWARE? OMFG 0o

They waited too long and the SpaceX IPO poisoned the well.

The irony is that they need their big customers to make big money to continue to pay them. Or more likely, they need their business design to steal and operate themselves.

The ripoff is coming 🐏✂️

Damn i want a doughnut

The frontier providers are losing money on every token. They are operating on the assumption that their model and infrastructure is so special that it will be too disruptive to the customer to leave. But it's actually a commodity. They will crash big time.

Turns out AI will probably have the profitability of about a Library

Pretty soon the only ppl that are going to be able to program are the ones that cant afford AI.

Ok, that’s enough you better go through the service entry now 😂

I’ve had two ai related ‘upgrade’ notes this week, for our main system where they stuck in “BTW there are additional charges for this that aren’t covered by your contract.” Which feels like the worst way to sneak in price hikes.

Clearly Eli has never leased a new car.  When you lease a car, you have to estimate how many miles you will use over the next 2 years.  If you use more than that you can buy more at a cost higher than what you initially paid for your quota.  The leasing company makes out by doing this, since the pricing encourages you to buy too many upfront.  Then you turn the car in with unused miles that you paid for, no refunds.  And they get the time value of upfront payments.  You have no bargaining power when you need to purchase more miles.  They take advantage of your fear of being price gouged at that point.
The AI companies are also trying to get customers to over-buy = over-pay.  Pure profit.  They disguise this by saying that capacity is reserved for you, and that they turned away other potential customers.  Partly true, but they can sell compute on a kind of spot market, so not as true as it used to be.

Thank you, Eli.