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AI subscriptions are a ticking time bomb for enterprise

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101–110 of 426 posts

Re: AI subscriptions are a ticking time bomb for enterprise

#101

Brad Gerstner confirmed that tokens aren't being sold at a loss. Whatever the formula, API + Subscription split, the companies are making a profit on net token sale. They maybe running at loss after all the salaries and stock comp, but tokens are in profit now.

Brad Gerstner might need a primer in asset depreciation.

Re: AI subscriptions are a ticking time bomb for enterprise

#102
post #18

I think I'm going to puke if I see one more "It's not X. It's Y." phrase or the word "load-bearing" used metaphorically.

I guess the good news may be that if/when there is a major pricing correction, that many of the people using free or $20/mo subscriptions to generate social media commentary may balk at the real cost and go back to writing it themselves. One can at least hope.

Something I have noticed is that the people who are using it to write everything are the same people who had a poor level of English writing a year or two ago.

It's just "intellectual" botox.

Re: AI subscriptions are a ticking time bomb for enterprise

#104

Brad Gerstner confirmed that tokens aren't being sold at a loss. Whatever the formula, API + Subscription split, the companies are making a profit on net token sale. They maybe running at loss after all the salaries and stock comp, but tokens are in profit now.

If tokens weren't being sold at a loss, Anthropic would be screaming about it from the rooftops. They've been desparately trying to make themselves not look like a money furnace lately, but it's not really working.

They might be sold at-compute-cost, but that of course ignores training, salaries, and everything else.

Re: AI subscriptions are a ticking time bomb for enterprise

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the good news may be that if/when there is a major pricing correction, that many of the people using free or $20/mo subscriptions to generate social media commentary may balk at the real cost and go back to writing it themselves. One can at least hope.

Something I have noticed is that the people who are using it to write everything are the same people who had a poor level of English writing a year or two ago. It's just "intellectual" botox.

> It's just "intellectual" botox.

Could be just ESL, it's hard to close the proficient to native gap.

Re: AI subscriptions are a ticking time bomb for enterprise

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the good news may be that if/when there is a major pricing correction, that many of the people using free or $20/mo subscriptions to generate social media commentary may balk at the real cost and go back to writing it themselves. One can at least hope.

Something I have noticed is that the people who are using it to write everything are the same people who had a poor level of English writing a year or two ago. It's just "intellectual" botox.

Would make sense ... writing is a skill, and one that I think most people are proud of if they are good at it.

Maybe it's different if you are doing technical/commercial writing, but for social media where you are writing for fun, and to express yourself, it'd be odd to let AI be your voice unless you realize your own writing is very poor.

Re: AI subscriptions are a ticking time bomb for enterprise

#108
post #79

Every AI subscription is a ticking time bomb for the frontier provider; within a few years we will be running local models as good as today’s frontier models with almost no cost burden. The floor will fall out of the enterprise market for all the frontier companies.

> within a few years we will be running local models as good as today’s frontier models with almost no cost burden

Based on what? The RAM requirements alone are extraordinary.

No, running large models on shared, dedicated hosted hardware at full utilization is going to be vastly more cost-efficient for the foreseeable future.

Re: AI subscriptions are a ticking time bomb for enterprise

#109

Replacing your workers with AI: --You lose control over their "salary" --You lose control over their "schedule" --Your company becomes reliant on another party that does not share your interests or values, and can stop working for you on a whim for any reason But AI is definitely good and trade unions are definitely bad, apparently...

>Your company becomes reliant on another party that does not share your interests or values, and can stop working for you on a whim for any reason

That's the same as human workers. In both cases there are contracts/money to help align interests

Re: AI subscriptions are a ticking time bomb for enterprise

#110
post #99
post #79

Every AI subscription is a ticking time bomb for the frontier provider; within a few years we will be running local models as good as today’s frontier models with almost no cost burden. The floor will fall out of the enterprise market for all the frontier companies.

>within a few years Eventually, we'll see. Frontier models still need some pretty serious hardware which will slowly come down in cost. Smaller models are becoming more capable, which will presumably continue to improve. I think there's still a pretty big gap, though. Claude estimates Opus 4.6 and GLM-5 need about 1.5Ti VRAM. It puts gpt-5.5 around 3-6Ti of VRAM. That's 8x Nvidia H200 @ ~$30k USD each. Still need som…

Or a single mlx cluster if one can find second hand machines somewhere. Difficult to get your hands on today, certainly, but not impossible.
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