I liked this. It got me thinking:
Are there any large consumer software companies (just software; no hardware or retail) that are not advertising based?
The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end
21–30 of 88 posts
Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end
#22This blog post makes a historical analogy, which at best is useful for imagining what might happen when investors become less giddy about funding AI.
There are underlying trends that are directly opposed. Efficiency is improving, but with agents, people are finding new ways to spend more. How that plays out seems difficult to judge.
For consumers, maybe the free stuff goes away and spending $20/month on a subscription becomes normalized? Or do costs decline so much that the advertising-supported model (like Google search) works? Or does inference become cheap enough to do it on the client most of the time?
Meanwhile, businesses will likely be able to justify spending more.
Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you do it? Do you host on your hardware or do you use cloud-based providers for open models?
You have a very curious definition of "local" if that includes "cloud-based providers".
> the models I do use remain static and predictable
Some people overload "local" a bit to mean you are hosting the model - whether it's on your computer, on your rack, or on your hetzner instance etc.
But I think parent is referring to the open/static aspect of the models.
If it's hosted by a generic model provider that is serving many users in parallel to reduce the end cost to the user, it's also theoretically a static version of the model... But I could see ad-supported fine tunes being a real problem.
Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you do it? Do you host on your hardware or do you use cloud-based providers for open models?
You have a very curious definition of "local" if that includes "cloud-based providers".
I assume this means, for example, using their own AWS / EC2 instances to store and process -- not "local" geographically, but "local" personally.
Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end
#25So what exactly is the "AI lifestyle subsidy"? The article doesn't seem entirely clear on it seeing as the last line essentially asks this same question. Some friends and I have been taking advantage of cheap GPU time from a company trying to break into that space, and of course lots of AI tools are being sold below cost but is that really it? Compare "GPU time is cheaper" to the classical "$10 steaks delivered direc…
>So what exactly is the "AI lifestyle subsidy"
The world's richest subsiding the real cost of offering AI services with the current state of our technology.
Once it's clear the AGI won't come anytime in 20X, where X is under 40, money tap will begin to close
Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
The bet is that costs will go down enough so that ad-supported AI will become profitable. This is not a positive outcome, a large part of the article is about the evils of ad-supported.
Is that really the bet? Is it not enough for a $20 per month subscription to be sustainable with the free level being a trial for that subscription?
Sure, professionals will pay $20/month, but I highly doubt that many consumers ever will.
Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end
#27I’m not sure. I’m paying for several different AI subscriptions and once things settle down, I’ll probably be paying for one or two, so I’m not sure that I’m benefiting in the sense that everyone is just moving very fast.
Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end
#281833: first known case of "lose money on every sale but make it up on volume." Amazing. Birth of postmodern capitalism right there.
https://barrypopik.com/blog/we_lose_money_on_every_sale_but_...
Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end
#29I am somewhat baffled at the economic models of LLMs right now. Ever since MS decided to gift me a copilot on my desktop that appears to have no limits and is entirely servicable for a range of tasks I'm failing to immediately see the monetisation. I feel like even trying to game the LLM into creating product placement is a relatively complex feat that might not be entirely reliable. Some of the groups who spend the…
Monetization will come with agents that take action on your behalf (reorder dinner, find and buy a gift for your niece, make dinner reservations). Bots will take a cut of every transaction, and intake ads to steer recommendations.
Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end
#30So what exactly is the "AI lifestyle subsidy"? The article doesn't seem entirely clear on it seeing as the last line essentially asks this same question. Some friends and I have been taking advantage of cheap GPU time from a company trying to break into that space, and of course lots of AI tools are being sold below cost but is that really it? Compare "GPU time is cheaper" to the classical "$10 steaks delivered direc…
>So what exactly is the "AI lifestyle subsidy" The world's richest subsiding the real cost of offering AI services with the current state of our technology. Once it's clear the AGI won't come anytime in 20X, where X is under 40, money tap will begin to close
So is the lifestyle being subsidized that of those researchers Zuck hired for $100M? That's a meaningfully different usage of the phrase than the original "millennial lifestyle subsidy" to the point where the comparison isn't useful. Or again, is it just the fact AI products are being offered below cost?