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"Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

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Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#121

Post by lelanthran »

8note wrote: post #41
roblh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a not a binary thing, it's a spectrum. There are many elements of uncertainty in every action imaginable. I'm inclined to agree with the other commenter though, the LLM slot machine is absolutely closer on that spectrum to gambling than your example is. Anthropic's optimization target is getting you to spend tokens, not produce the right answer. It's to produce an answer plausible enough but incomplete enough th…

im on a subscription though. they want me to not spend tokens. that way my subscription makes money for them rather than costing them electricity and degrading their GPUs

> im on a subscription though.

Understood.

> they want me to not spend tokens.

No, they want you to expand your subscription. Maybe buy 2x subscriptions.

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#122

Post by cjrp »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #25

Funemployed right now joyously spending way way more time than 996, pulling the slot machine arm to get tokens, having a ball. But that's for personal pleasure. This post is receeding from the concerns about "token anxiety," about the addiction to tokens. This post is about work culture & late capitalism anxiety, about possible pressures & systems society might impose. I reflect a lot on AI doesn't reduce the work, i…

> 996 sounds like garbage on its own, as a system of toil. But I also very much respect an idea of continuous work, one that also intersperses rest throughout the day. Doing some chores or going to the supermarket or playing with the kid can be an incredibly good way to let your preconscious sift through the big gnarly problems about.

I _kind_ of get this if we're talking about working on big, important, world-changing problems. If it's another SaaS app or something like that, I find it pretty depressing.

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#123

Post by trashb »

mossTechnician wrote: post #28
ctoth wrote: post #11

The gambling analogy completely falls apart on inspection. Slot machines have variable reward schedules by design — every element is optimized to maximize time on device. Social media optimizes for engagement, and compulsive behavior is the predictable output. The optimization target produces the addiction. What's Anthropic's optimization target??? Getting you the right answer as fast as possible! The variability in…

At one point, people said Google's optimization target was giving you the right search results as soon as possible. What will prevent Anthropic from falling into the same pattern of enshittification as its predecessors, optimizing for profit like all other businesses?

Slightly off topic actually but ill put it here.

I found it interesting that Google removed the "summary cards" supposedly "to improve user experience" however the AI overview was added back.

I suspect the AI overview is much more influenceable by advertisement money then the summary cards where.

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#124

Post by mikkupikku »

samrus wrote: post #78
Aurornis wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anthropic's optimization target is getting you to spend tokens, not produce the right answer. The majority of us are using their subscription plans with flat rate fees. Their incentive is the precise opposite of what you say. The less we use the product, the more they benefit. It's like a gym membership. I think all of the gambling addiction analogies in this thread are just so strained that I can't take them serio…

Thats a bit naive. Anthropic makes way more money if they gey you to use past your plans limit and wonder if you should get the next tier or switch to tokens

The price jump between subscription tiers is so high that relatively few people will upgrade instead of waiting a few more hours, and even if somebody does upgrade to the next subscription level, Anthropic still has an incentive to provide satisfactory answers as quickly as possible, to minimize tokens used per subscription, and because there is plenty of competition so any frustrated users are potential lost customers.

I swear this whole conversation is motivated reasoning from AI holdouts who desperately want to believe everybody else is getting scammed by a gambling scheme, that they don't stop and think about the situation rationally. Insofar as Claude is dominant, it's only because Claude works the best. There is meaningful competition in this market, as soon as Anthropic drops the ball they'll be replaced.

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#125

Post by Aerroon »

Drakim wrote: post #91
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill is unrelated to their cost. If they can produce answer in 1/10th of the token, they can charge 10x more per token, likely even more.

That is simply not true, token price is largely determined by the token price of their rival services (even before their own operational costs). If everybody else charges about $1 per millions of tokens, then they will also charge about $1 per millions of tokens (or slightly above/below) regardless of how many answers per token they can provide.

Opus 4.6 costs about 5-10x of GLM 5.

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#126

Post by mikkupikku »

lelanthran wrote: post #121
8note wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

im on a subscription though. they want me to not spend tokens. that way my subscription makes money for them rather than costing them electricity and degrading their GPUs

> im on a subscription though. Understood. > they want me to not spend tokens. No, they want you to expand your subscription. Maybe buy 2x subscriptions.

He's not going to do that if all Claude can do is waste tokens for hours.

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#127

Post by mikkupikku »

tsimionescu wrote: post #86
pixl97 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you'll continue to spend as many tokens as possible for as long as possible. I mean this only works if Anthropic is the only game in town. In your analogy if anyone else builds a casino with a higher payout then they lose the game. With the rate of LLM improvement over the years, this doesn't seem like a stable means of business.

While I don't know if this applies to AI usage, but actual gambling addicts most certainly do not shop around for the best possible rewards: they stick more or less to the place they got addicted at initially. Not to mention, there's plenty of people addicted to "casinos" that give 0 monetary rewards, such as Candy Crush or Farmville back in the day and Genshin Impact or other gacha games today. So, if there's a way…

You're taking the gambling analogy too seriously. People do in fact compare different LLMs and shop around. How gamblers choose casinos is literally irrelevant because this whole analogy is nothing more than a retarded excuse for AI holdouts to feel smug.

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#128

Post by Aerroon »

RGamma wrote: post #115
Aurornis wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anthropic's optimization target is getting you to spend tokens, not produce the right answer. The majority of us are using their subscription plans with flat rate fees. Their incentive is the precise opposite of what you say. The less we use the product, the more they benefit. It's like a gym membership. I think all of the gambling addiction analogies in this thread are just so strained that I can't take them serio…

And we're still in the expansion phase, so LLM life is actually good... for now.

It's not going to get worse than now though. Open models like GLM 5 are very good. Even if companies decide to crank up the costs, the current open models will still be available. They will likely get cheaper to run over time as well (better hardware).

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#129

Post by mikkupikku »

scuff3d wrote: post #74
ctoth wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please go read how the Anthropic max plan works. IF I USE LESS TOKENS, ANTHROPIC GETS MORE MONEY! You are blindly pattern matching to "corporation bad!" without actually considering the underlying structure of the situation. I believe there's a phrase for this to do with probabilistic avians?

The Max plan has usage limits, and you can buy more... Which is exactly what I'm talking about... And the incentive is even strong for the lower tiers. They want answers to be just good enough to keep you using it, but bad enough that you're pushed towards buying the higher tier.

Have you actually used a max plan? You have to try really damn hard to get close to the max plan usage. I don't think that's something that realistically happens by accident, you have to be deliberately spawning a huge number of subagents or something.

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#130

Post by Hasnep »

lelanthran wrote: post #119
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill is unrelated to their cost. If they can produce answer in 1/10th of the token, they can charge 10x more per token, likely even more.

What businesses charge for a product is completely unrelated to what it costs them. They charge what the market will bear. If "what the market will bear" is lower than the cost of production then they will stop offering it.

Companies make a loss on purpose all the time.
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