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A ChatGPT Pro subscription costs 38.6 months of income in low-income countries

policykahani.substack.com

21–30 of 107 posts

Re: A ChatGPT Pro subscription costs 38.6 months of income in low-income countries

#21
So a handful of things here. One is that you can actually at the moment at least use a lot of it for free. Secondarily, I think when it comes to access to ChatGPT and other services, in a lot of low-income countries there's a much bigger hurdle than the money, which is a combination of language and device that is capable of connecting to ChatGPT. There are a lot of countries still where you're limited to feature phones or not even having a phone at all.

Re: A ChatGPT Pro subscription costs 38.6 months of income in low-income countries

#22

A CS degree costs something like 124 yrs salary for someone in a low income nation—and it’s a much longer harder road. I’m not AI’s biggest fan, but arguably, this type of tech actually narrows the gap. Even if it’s expensive.

Do you have a source for this claim?

UK tuition fees £9,535/year - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/tuition-fees-and-...

£9,535/year * 3 year degree / 124 years ~= £231/year ~= 310 USD/year

UN estimates GDP/capita of Yemen and Burundi were less than this, that Tajikistan has lower gross average monthly wages. Those are nominal, not PPP.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_w...

The World Bank numbers here are adjusted for cost of living, say that 1.31% of the world population are living on a dollar a day: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/poverty-explorer?tab=li...

Re: A ChatGPT Pro subscription costs 38.6 months of income in low-income countries

#23
A warning about ChatGPT Pro. The 128k tokens context claim is deceptive advertising.

Messages above ~65k tokens are rejected. Messages between about 50k-65k are accepted, but the right-side of the text is pruned before the LLM call is made. Messages just below ~50k are accepted, but are then partly "forgot" on any follow up questions (either the entire first prompt is excluded, or the left-side of the text is chopped off).

Realistically, it's a 55-65k token limit (40k token question, 15k token response).

They want you to attach your context so they can use RAG.

I can't even be bothered filing a bug report, because I know this shit is intentional. The mistakes always run in a favorable direction.

(GPT-5-Pro is a genuinely good model however, and usage limits are generous)

Re: A ChatGPT Pro subscription costs 38.6 months of income in low-income countries

#24
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for this claim?

UK tuition fees £9,535/year - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/tuition-fees-and-... £9,535/year * 3 year degree / 124 years ~= £231/year ~= 310 USD/year UN estimates GDP/capita of Yemen and Burundi were less than this, that Tajikistan has lower gross average monthly wages. Those are nominal, not PPP. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countr…

For Yemen, you should look at the cost of a CS degree in Yemen, which is $ 700/year, not in a foreign country.

Re: A ChatGPT Pro subscription costs 38.6 months of income in low-income countries

#25

One issue I have with the widely used metric of 'Productivity per hours worked' - if I have a second apt I rent out to Bob for $1000, I have a 'productivity' of $6.25 per hour 'worked', despite nobody producing anything and nobody working for any length of time.

But that's the same with GDP: if you and me are living on an uninhabited island and grow/catch all of our food for consumption, our GDP is $0. If however I rent out my bungalow to you and rent yours instead, and I sell you all my food and buy your food instead, somehow our GDP skyrockets.

Re: A ChatGPT Pro subscription costs 38.6 months of income in low-income countries

#26
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for this claim?

UK tuition fees £9,535/year - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/tuition-fees-and-... £9,535/year * 3 year degree / 124 years ~= £231/year ~= 310 USD/year UN estimates GDP/capita of Yemen and Burundi were less than this, that Tajikistan has lower gross average monthly wages. Those are nominal, not PPP. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countr…

Why is the basis a high-tuition fee high-cost country? Many countries have much lower fees and costs, including Western ones.

https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-by-country

Re: A ChatGPT Pro subscription costs 38.6 months of income in low-income countries

#28

A CS degree costs something like 124 yrs salary for someone in a low income nation—and it’s a much longer harder road. I’m not AI’s biggest fan, but arguably, this type of tech actually narrows the gap. Even if it’s expensive.

It doesn't

You can't compare the cost of a degree in the US with how much that person would pay in their country (even for a top uni there)

And even if you literally compare US costs, that person would probably be eligible to scholarships etc (if they manage to be selected, of course)

Re: A ChatGPT Pro subscription costs 38.6 months of income in low-income countries

#30
… who cares?

1. the companies don’t get any cheaper compute because a user is from a low-income country.

2. this is an AI subscription, it’s purely a luxury product. We do not need this to survive. If you can’t afford it, don’t buy it.

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