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

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

#61
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the earlier version of your comment: > Why would someone in Yemen have to go to UK to get a CS degree when they have multiple universities offering the same course. Same reason they'd be using an American AI company instead of a cheaper one that e.g. runs on their phone.

That's not an answer. You are factually wrong, a Yemeni does not need to pay 100+ years of salary to get a CS degree, end of story. Also, I've been a researcher and have few scientific papers published (you can search for my name on scholar: Enrico Polanski) and I've seen ZERO evidence that a student from Harvard or Imperial to be more knowledgeable than one in unnamed universities from the third world you've never h…

> That's not an answer.

???

> You are factually wrong, a Yemeni does not need to pay 100+ years of salary to get a CS degree, end of story.

So far as I can tell, the like-for-like comparison is as per the other commenter you responded to: here's a fancy thing rich people in rich countries use, therefore the comparison is to a rich country's degree.

This is because you also don't need to pay 38.6 months of income to get access to an AI. Not even to access OpenAI's best. And even the downgrade after usage limits is not terrible.

Of course, if you don't like this comparison, then sure, I'd accept what you say. I'm disagreeing about the assumptions of what's comparable here.

> I've seen ZERO evidence that a student from Harvard or Imperial to be more knowledgeable than one in unnamed universities from the third world you've never heard about.

Mm. Tempted to agree even without looking you up: I'm British, so my reference point for "fancy university isn't automatically great" is half the British politicians.

OTOH, after I graduated, I did live in Cambridge (UK) for nearly a decade, and I do miss how incredibly densely packed it was with nerds, it's not something I found in other places.

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

#62

Yes, obviously. It's advanced technology. Are we just dividing two numbers now? Median people from the Democratic Republic of Congo will have to work for 6 years to pay a PG&E bill.

Their power bills are at least an order of magnitude cheaper. Pricing is relative. They also consume fewer kilowatts of energy.

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

#63
Home computers were ridiculously expensive in their initial years. Some could cost more than a car. ChatGPT Pro gives you access to cutting edge technology so it isn't surprising that it's expensive.

Just remember that a Wal Mart $50 phone is faster than a supercomputer from the 70s/80s. Prices will go down.

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

#64

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 are a lot of countries still where you're limited to feature phones

I thought China fixed this for most of the world, at least for Africa it's fixed. It's the Internet access being the bottleneck now.

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

#66

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?

In Greece university education is free. You just have to finish highschool and take an exam.

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

#67

For all the shorcomings of AI and everyone involved this must be one of the silliest takes. - The latest concept sports car costs a few lifetimes of income in low-income countries - Aircraft carrier costs 200 GDP of Tuvalu

Except AI boosts worker productivity and with it, GDP increases. They will use a Chinese model that is an order of magnitude cheaper.

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

#68

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.

> There's 5 billion people with a smartphone worldwide

There are more than 8 billion people on this world. By your own account, 3 billion of them do not have smart phones.

> The device hurdle is gone.

Evidently not. There are a lot of countries that still have a smartphone penetration rate of We're talking about people with low income here. We're talking about people that cannot even afford bicycles for transportation.

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

#69
post #64

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 are a lot of countries still where you're limited to feature phones I thought China fixed this for most of the world, at least for Africa it's fixed. It's the Internet access being the bottleneck now.

> at least for Africa it's fixed

How is it fixed for Africa? Africa has a ton of phones, but it does not have a lot of smart phones. There is a reason that SMS and USSD are corner stones of the african digital economy.

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

#70
post #5

Luckily, a ChatGPT Pro subscription is not mandatory. It's not like one can't live without it.

for now. Wait until you have to compete with those who do have it. It's like competing in a race with a ferrari without a race car. The same thing used to be said of the internet.

Not everything is a high-stakes competition. Not every car is a Ferrari, precisely because not every car needs to be. Same goes for your other example, the local sellers at my local market don’t require an internet presence to sustain their businesses.
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