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

policykahani.substack.com

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

#51

Post by alightsoul »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #11
v5v3 wrote: post #4

I think one step at a time. There are still many countries where digital literacy is very low. So first step is to ensure everyone has internet/mobile phone/laptop and knows how to use them.

I take one look at our smartphone/social media addicted society and the damage that does and think of the parallels of forcing opium on a population in the 19th century Not that the rural third world don’t already have phones. Whether they are engineering to be as addictive as crack like in the west I’m not sure.

Oh, they are already as addictive as crack because Zuckerberg has successfully pushed his social media onto them. And it's very hard to compete with Zuck. The network effect is a very wide moat.

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

#52

Post by alightsoul »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #43
alightsoul wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, this will only increase immigration. Isn't this what the US doesn't want?

Most people who are desperate to immigrate and risking their lives to cross the US border aren't doing it because they can't afford ChatGPT Pro but because of living in extreme poverty or danger.

not literally, but this will widen income disparity and make the US so much more attractive to immigrate to.

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

#53

Post by graemep »

District5524 wrote: post #35
ben_w wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's for international students going to the UK to study CS. There is not much point for anyone to go to the UK to study CS for that amount of money (unless they already live there, but they get their degree for a third or even less of that money). It's normal for international student tuition fees to be inflated by many universities, they try to collect some extra revenue based on a perceived extra prestige, espec…

> There is not much point for anyone to go to the UK to study CS for that amount of money (unless they already live there, but they get their degree for a third or even less of that money)

A lot of people do though. There are lots of international students, many from low and middle income countries. Obviously from high income families.

> It's normal for international student tuition fees to be inflated by many universities, they try to collect some extra revenue based on a perceived extra prestige,

In the UK the government heavily subsidises the fees of British students (basically defined as having lived in the UK for the previous three years, other than on a student visa - there are some other complexities but that is the simple version) whereas overseas fees are the full market rate.

> Similar to charging different prices for tourists than for locals.

Not a thing in the UK.

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

#54

Post by alightsoul »

rs186 wrote: post #47

So what? My salary pays for 2-3 developers in the UK, even more in India, and I am not necessarily any better than those developers. Should I feel bad for that as well?

So, sell the same thing at the same price everywhere? Things are cheaper in the developing world so US AI can either follow their pricing or get ignored.

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

#55

Post by alightsoul »

xvector wrote: post #45
niek_pas wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author is making a moral argument, not a practical (from Google’s perspective) one.

I feel like this is a huge problem with the progressive movement in the US. Morally sound arguments that rarely make practical or economic sense - and no, "tax the rich" doesn't get us there: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/ten-myths-about-the-u-s-tax...

It is now US policy to push US AI onto the rest of the world. They can either lower prices to make it affordable in those regions, or, get ignored and use Chinese models which are an order of magnitude cheaper, like Deepseek, or just immigrate.

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

#56

Post by alightsoul »

ben_w wrote: post #36
nosianu wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And many AI are cheaper than OpenAI Pro. For example, OpenAI free.

which has stricter usage limits.

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

#58

Post by alightsoul »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #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 phon…

There's 5 billion people with a smartphone worldwide. The device hurdle is gone. ChatGPT is worse in languages other than English, but it's still so much better than searching on Google. The alternative before ChatGPT was watching time consuming videos on Youtube.

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

#59

Post by FirmwareBurner »

alightsoul wrote: post #52
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people who are desperate to immigrate and risking their lives to cross the US border aren't doing it because they can't afford ChatGPT Pro but because of living in extreme poverty or danger.

not literally, but this will widen income disparity and make the US so much more attractive to immigrate to.

Not when US work visas are so hard to get. And probably you'd wan to import smart people who can think beyond ChatGPT.

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

#60

Post by alightsoul »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #59
alightsoul wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not literally, but this will widen income disparity and make the US so much more attractive to immigrate to.

Not when US work visas are so hard to get. And probably you'd wan to import smart people who can think beyond ChatGPT.

They don't get work visas, they start businesses even illegally. Or they could just use a Chinese model. Either way this is a losing proposiion for the US.
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