I interpret the case you mention as a necessary though jarring rebalancing - to the opposite pole - of the sycophantic prior implementations which would, in paraphrasing here, praise the user with framing like “Wow this is a fascinating comparison and you’re on to something that can change the world!” which has been documented (I’m not citing sources at this time, my bad I know).
The post definitely reads to me like the diary entry of a jilted friendship where for some reason the counter party got tired of being encouraging to everything and is, well, kind of not interested in hiding that anymore. YMMV.
Okay then provide a link to a Dropbox PDF or official documentation “demonstrating” the premise is “untrue” please. Or admit you’re blinded by faith. Or financially interested in the public believing in a hypothetical like your second sentence.
If you're claiming "AI inference is sold at a loss", it's on you to prove it.
All we have actual evidence of is: some users use enough AI that the subscription is sold at a loss to them (up to degenerate cases: usage maxed out at all times), if billed by API metrics, while some other users are, by the same metrics, profitable (down to degenerate cases: a forgotten subscription with $20 a month and 0 usage).
We don't know how API prices relate to costs - we only have estimates. And we certainly don't know how much inference does an average subscription user spend.
If you have some sort of information that would decisively prove that the aggregate is "AI company N is losing money on subscriptions", then, show it.
Or is it you who's blinded by faith? Like some sort of AI bubble cultist? The bubble is real, you just have to believe in it?
Very well said. People are making a lot of claims when very little knowledge of the financials is public. If you actually look at the numbers, there are plenty of ways in which API revenue and forgotten subs could more than make the difference for power users. Even if power users are getting 10-20x their sub fee in tokens, the math could still work out. Personally, I doubt more than 5% of Claude subs even approach max usage, because it requires having so many agents running all of the time.
I imagine we'll know in a few months when these companies go public.
Nah, kids, this is an opinion column. If you can’t tell the difference, then you don’t get to sit at the adults table. I’ve been an opinion writer for most of my life, and dressing up my perspectives in scientific LARP is bullshit. And yes, I do have underlying suspicions why certain cultures feel entitled to get away with taking such a tone in their declarations. This has been formed over decades of observation and I won’t claim it is scientific…unlike these two fellas who enjoy foods I do not.
This is the most white collar “we call bullshit” type of writing I’ve seen in a long time and I’m here for it. Not a good sign for the next two AI IPOs either. SpaceX had the hubris to release their S-1 publicly and whatnot. This is going to be “Hot Garbage Summer” in the equities market lmao. GG VCs.
Uh, are you sure about that claim regarding surveillance over human history? Just because the technology has advanced does not entail the methods or concepts are novel. Quite the contrary in my view: the modern versions are natural evolutions of long traditions and customs. Having “rats” and “moles” reporting on behavior is, I mean, it predates written records of I’m not mistaken.
Today is a totally different scale. The German stasi needed a huge amount of people to handle all the incoming data and a lot of it fell through anyways l. Today you just throw a lot of compute at it and nothing can escape.
Yes you always had people snitching on each other but it was inefficient and hard to centralize. Today is different.
During development, children are in a condition where their fears are predominant. The world is big and scary and they need conditions and support to begin to process their emotions, all of them, into what I consider a “rainbow.” Each should be adjacent to another, as life is best lived with access to and the benefit of each when appropriate circumstances call them from their “library” so to speak.
It’s not “forcing” a child to sit through it, as much as it is “presenting” them with an outside work of art which REFLECTS BACK TO THEM a validation of their experience along different stages of development.
One of the best examples of what I’m talking about is the book “Where the Wild Things Are” by Maurice Sendak. It is canon. Perhaps you had shitty parents who didn’t “make you” engage with literature.
An interviewer once asked him “Don’t you think the book is too scary for kids?” His reply lambasted the question with “What is wrong with you? Were you never a child? EVERYTHING IS SCARY TO A CHILD.”
So, there it is buckaroo. You may not like the tone of my response, but I think your question was phrased in a flippant and pedantic manner to begin with. Fire, meet fire, and you’re welcome.
Everything you address makes sense. I’m not a Texan by birth but most of my life here, have traveled overseas, learned French language, culture, and cuisine. The issue is, unfortunately, profit drives everything here. Now it’s driving the most successful post-war boom economy into debt, because, well, Boomers.
The saying is the US doesn’t have “health care” we have “sick care.” Preventing diseases? Not profitable. Giving people diseases then charging them for treatment? Profitable.
Fortunately the obesity epidemic has a cliff like tail end, as those people tend to eat themselves into an early grave and lack the resources to pay to prolong their participation in Planet Earth.
Unfortunately I don’t think your last point is true. The chronically sick, diabetic, unhealthy obese people (to say nothing of our plethora of druggies) limp along for dozens of years, racking up healthcare costs all along the way.
“It’s hard for me to put into words how bad this is.”
AHAHAHAHA! I genuinely laughed out loud, filled the room.
This is the “citation needed” rebuttal most REASONABLE people in the software industry have been looking for, and the sample size is only going to get bigger! Does anyone really think - not believe, logically conclude based on evidence at hand - that there will be any contrary outcomes at scale? Honestly, this is going to put a lot of software pros into a “sabbatical” where cleaning up the mess should be billed like that old joke at auto mechanics’ shops:
$150 an hour to fix it
$500 an hour if you tried to fix it before bringing it here
Seriously laughing out loud. I needed this. Hahaha
Edit: no wonder he’s so astute - came up in construction. In that industry cost versus benefit and safety concerns are often a matter of life or death. Real consequences. A lot more educational than staring at a glowing box for most of one’s career. Disclosure: I did risk management for construction projects, like the Alabama MB plant.
This is a great summary and well reasoned. Kudos to u/lpcvoid and I’m saving for later. Also the Torment Nexus link was helpful. Starting to see more of these and in time it will matter. Ed Zitron is human and fallible but certainly getting the facts in one place these days…and they are spurious AF lol
I interpret the case you mention as a necessary though jarring rebalancing - to the opposite pole - of the sycophantic prior implementations which would, in paraphrasing here, praise the user with framing like “Wow this is a fascinating comparison and you’re on to something that can change the world!” which has been documented (I’m not citing sources at this time, my bad I know).
The post definitely reads to me like the diary entry of a jilted friendship where for some reason the counter party got tired of being encouraging to everything and is, well, kind of not interested in hiding that anymore. YMMV.
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