Our AI bills are subsidised, and I don't think many people have priced in what happens next

Reddit r/ArtificialInteligence News
ai-pricing subsidies business-strategy sustainability openai anthropic

Summary

A commentary on the subsidized pricing of AI APIs, warning that current costs are below actual expenses and may rise significantly, posing risks to businesses built on these assumptions.

This is something I keep thinking about as someone who's built AI into a few businesses. The price we pay for AI right now isn't the real cost. Altman said they lose money even on the $200/month plan. I read Anthropic had people on their $200 plan burning $1000+/day of compute until they brought in limits. And OpenAI is supposedly on track to lose something like $14bn this year. Token prices keep dropping, yes, but they're selling it below cost and investors are covering the gap. That's fine, until it's not! At some point the people funding all this want a return, and we will have to pick up the bill. Many businesses assume today's prices are permanent, and that they will only come down. Some businesses depend on these subsidised prices, they don't really have a business, they've got a temporary business with a discount! Curious what people here think: \- Do you model your own usage assuming cost goes up 3-5x? \- Is anyone actually building a fallback atm (local models, multi-provider), or is that overkill?
Original Article

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