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The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end

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Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end

#51

Post by crvdgc »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #12

I 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…

Ads injected into content can be very hard to block though. I wonder what an LLM ad-blocker would look like? Maybe something like:

> For contents in this [community maintained] list, do not mention them in any shape or form

Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end

#52

Post by barrkel »

netdevphoenix wrote: post #25
some_random wrote: post #17

So 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

Are they subsidizing it?

Training is definitely "subsidized". Some think it's an investment, but with the pace of advancement, depreciation is high. Free users are subsidized, bit their data is grist for the training mill so arguably they come under the training subsidy. /

Is paid inference subsidized? I don't think it is by much.

Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end

#53

Post by throwanem »

likium wrote: post #43
throwanem wrote: post #2

This has been coming for a long time and it is why I use local models only. I'm willing to give up capabilities in exchange for being able to trust that whatever biases may exist in the models I do use remain static and predictable.

We only have access to local models because they're subsidized too. There's nothing to prevent companies or state actors from paying/funding for increased probability and inherent bias. Also local models are close in capabilities now but who knows in a few years what that'll look like.

Eh. Files on my hard disks change when I say. And getting hooked on ChatGPT is like - is exactly like - getting addicted to money. If I benefit less from what I do use, I'll accept the trade of never having that rug yanked out from under me. It looks to me like raw model capabilities are topping out anyway; the engineering around them looks like making more difference in the back half of the decade, and I see nothing essential about that requiring nuclear-powered datacenter pyramids or whatever.

Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end

#55

Post by conductr »

siliconc0w wrote: post #47

The problem is that it's really hard to capture the market when there are so many well financed players competing. Plus distilled local models are within 10% or so of the frontier models and are fine for most questions so you could see a shift where local dominates and you'll only need to go to the cloud for hard problems. Finally, I think most people are willing to pay for AI - it's more utility than a streaming ser…

I think what social media and search engines have taught us is that people are never willing to pay enough to avoid ads from being introduced. Even when people pay, ads are just too tempting of a revenue stream for most businesses to ignore so they'll find a way to do both.

Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end

#56

Post by oytis »

nilirl wrote: post #21

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?

Microsoft? They do advertising among other things, but I don't think it makes the largest chunk of their revenue

Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end

#58

Post by bluGill »

some_random wrote: post #17

So 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…

What price would you pay for GPU - if it was $10000 per hour would you still pay? What you are really saying is you think there is a reasonable price that enough people like you would pay that allows the sellers to make enough money to offer it.

Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end

#59

Post by waffletower »

I think the author hasn't considered the potential for improvements to ad blocking algorithms, particularly considering that local open source models could be directed toward ad filtering for a wide variety of content, including other LLM interactions. I would bet (and hope) that subscriptions are going to win out over ad revenue models.

Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end

#60

Post by flowerthoughts »

netdevphoenix wrote: post #25
some_random wrote: post #17

So 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

> The world's richest

... or your defined-benefits pension fund trying desperately to stay solvent.

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