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Why Wall Street is ignoring big tech's debt [video]

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Re: Why Wall Street is ignoring big tech's debt [video]

#14

Post by acivitillo »

WarmWash wrote: post #9

I don't know a single white collar worker who isn't using AI for their job. Not like forced, but like "Oh damn, this bot thing can do a lot of tedious leg work for me". To think that people won't pay $60-$80/mo to continue using it is wild to me. In a white collar environment it pays for itself in a few hours of use. If you focus on how much value AI brings to people (mostly in time saved), the bubble hardly looks bu…

$80 per month in a 5,000 people Enterprise is 400k per month which translates to ~5m per year. That is easily in the 8-16% of their total IT budget. I don’t know you, but companies don’t like to increase recurring cost. Is AI good? Yes. Is it clear how it generates enough ROI to justify a material IT cost increase? No. This is the problem now, not how much white collar workers use AI, but what is the productivity narrative of it. Because AI is so generic, there is no clear specialized use case, like when Salesforce invented the CRM for example.

Re: Why Wall Street is ignoring big tech's debt [video]

#15

Post by csomar »

WarmWash wrote: post #9

I don't know a single white collar worker who isn't using AI for their job. Not like forced, but like "Oh damn, this bot thing can do a lot of tedious leg work for me". To think that people won't pay $60-$80/mo to continue using it is wild to me. In a white collar environment it pays for itself in a few hours of use. If you focus on how much value AI brings to people (mostly in time saved), the bubble hardly looks bu…

Currently, a $20/month openai subscription gives roughly $400 in codex api credits. That doesn’t count what you can get from the web chatbot.

So it better be that api tokens are seriously overpriced. There is value at $20/month. I am not so sure if it’s $400/month or more.

Re: Why Wall Street is ignoring big tech's debt [video]

#16

Post by TrackerFF »

WarmWash wrote: post #9

I don't know a single white collar worker who isn't using AI for their job. Not like forced, but like "Oh damn, this bot thing can do a lot of tedious leg work for me". To think that people won't pay $60-$80/mo to continue using it is wild to me. In a white collar environment it pays for itself in a few hours of use. If you focus on how much value AI brings to people (mostly in time saved), the bubble hardly looks bu…

But the question is how much are people willing to pay for AI.

I use AI every day at work, but I only pay $20. That's the most I will ever want to pay. And, so far, it gives me everything I need.

If OpenAI or Anthropic suddenly said "Sorry, the game is up. You'll have to pay $100/month now", I would 100% look into cheaper Chinese solutions.

I suspect the AI subscription (or API) economy is whale economy. You have a small, small percentage of users that are happy to pay whatever it takes - while the vast majority will either use the free tier, and then the next group will pay for the cheapest or next cheapest subscription.

EDIT: And I'll echo what another user wrote here. The VAST majority of office users around the world don't work for tech companies flush in cash. Even adding something like $20 - $100 subscriptions to every user is a serious enough financial obligation that it needs to go through budget planning / boards. Even more so for all the government workers around the world.

Re: Why Wall Street is ignoring big tech's debt [video]

#18

Post by api »

WarmWash wrote: post #9

I don't know a single white collar worker who isn't using AI for their job. Not like forced, but like "Oh damn, this bot thing can do a lot of tedious leg work for me". To think that people won't pay $60-$80/mo to continue using it is wild to me. In a white collar environment it pays for itself in a few hours of use. If you focus on how much value AI brings to people (mostly in time saved), the bubble hardly looks bu…

After using it a bit I’m convinced it’s not, as a whole, a bubble.

Bubbles exist around it. Data center construction may end up overbuilding, much like the dark fiber thing during dot.com, since better chips and models will shrink power and space requirements over time.

But the core tech is the most powerful new thing I have seen since discovering the Internet, at least. Maybe more.

Re: Why Wall Street is ignoring big tech's debt [video]

#19

Post by elorant »

WarmWash wrote: post #9

I don't know a single white collar worker who isn't using AI for their job. Not like forced, but like "Oh damn, this bot thing can do a lot of tedious leg work for me". To think that people won't pay $60-$80/mo to continue using it is wild to me. In a white collar environment it pays for itself in a few hours of use. If you focus on how much value AI brings to people (mostly in time saved), the bubble hardly looks bu…

That’s not the argument though. The argument is that conversion rates as per OpenAI are about 5% and to serve the other 95% you need to build significant infrastructure that costs hundreds of billions annually. So for every white collar worker that you know and uses it and pays for it there are 20 free loaders. And mind you, 5% conversion rate is extremely high already as a number per se. It won't magically reach 20% in a couple of years. Chances are it will fall particularly for the enterprise segment due to the advent of the Chinese models.
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