The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end • Hacker News Board

Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end

#71

Post by SV_BubbleTime » Mon, Jun 23, 2025, 8:24 PM UTC

natnatenathan wrote: post #29

Quarrelsome wrote: post #12

I am somewhat baffled at the economic models of LLMs right now. Ever since MS decided to gift me a copilot on my desktop that appears to have no limits and is entirely servicable for a range of tasks I'm failing to immediately see the monetisation. I feel like even trying to game the LLM into creating product placement is a relatively complex feat that might not be entirely reliable. Some of the groups who spend the…

Monetization will come with agents that take action on your behalf (reorder dinner, find and buy a gift for your niece, make dinner reservations). Bots will take a cut of every transaction, and intake ads to steer recommendations.

We’re here.

Claude Code with API key, ran me like $100 in 4 days.

Makes their $100/mo plan a screaming deal. I’m getting 26 days a month free!!!

Go back six months ago and ask me if I’m likely to pay $100/mo/user for any new service. It would have been… unlikely.

Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end

#72

Post by queenkjuul » Mon, Jun 23, 2025, 9:07 PM UTC

some_random wrote: post #17

So what exactly is the "AI lifestyle subsidy"? The article doesn't seem entirely clear on it seeing as the last line essentially asks this same question. Some friends and I have been taking advantage of cheap GPU time from a company trying to break into that space, and of course lots of AI tools are being sold below cost but is that really it? Compare "GPU time is cheaper" to the classical "$10 steaks delivered direc…

They mean that AI services will get worse (ad-driven or more expensive). So the models will eventually be tweaked to serve revenue generation, not usefulness, just like Google. Enjoy the subsidized, "genuinely* trying to be useful" era we're in now, because it won't last

Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end

#73

Post by hackable_sand » Mon, Jun 23, 2025, 10:00 PM UTC

netdevphoenix wrote: post #25

some_random wrote: post #17

So what exactly is the "AI lifestyle subsidy"? The article doesn't seem entirely clear on it seeing as the last line essentially asks this same question. Some friends and I have been taking advantage of cheap GPU time from a company trying to break into that space, and of course lots of AI tools are being sold below cost but is that really it? Compare "GPU time is cheaper" to the classical "$10 steaks delivered direc…

>So what exactly is the "AI lifestyle subsidy" The world's richest subsiding the real cost of offering AI services with the current state of our technology. Once it's clear the AGI won't come anytime in 20X, where X is under 40, money tap will begin to close

I would wait until 2100.

Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end

#74

Post by spwa4 » Mon, Jun 23, 2025, 10:24 PM UTC

pphysch wrote: post #69

AstroBen wrote: post #7

Even if unintentional, pushing of products is already happening. If you ask any AI for a tech stack to create a web app you'll get recommendations for Vercel, AWS and co. This is going to be the new SEO

Wielded responsibly, this can be a good thing, because bad practices can be directly fine-tuned out of the model. Thinking about how much junk pollutes legacy knowledge domains, like webdev. But yes it will be abused for advertisement as well.

I think you have totally misunderstood what enshittification is about. You'll ask for a webapp, and a salesforce link will come out, that charges $10 per visitor, and $10k to get your data back out, along with a 30% kickback from salesforce to OpenAI or whoever.

Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end

#75

Post by dr_dshiv » Mon, Jun 23, 2025, 11:02 PM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #61

oytis wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a joke back then, not a real business model

The 1933 one is a joke about a real phenomenon (the 1833 example is just a joke about false advertising).

Was it? Both seemed real, and both seemed a joke.

That’s kind of the weird majesty of the whole concept.

Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end

#76

Post by acoard » Mon, Jun 23, 2025, 11:51 PM UTC

likium wrote: post #43

throwanem wrote: post #2

This has been coming for a long time and it is why I use local models only. I'm willing to give up capabilities in exchange for being able to trust that whatever biases may exist in the models I do use remain static and predictable.

We only have access to local models because they're subsidized too. There's nothing to prevent companies or state actors from paying/funding for increased probability and inherent bias. Also local models are close in capabilities now but who knows in a few years what that'll look like.

> We only have access to local models because they're subsidized too.

Yes, and the flow of future models may dry up, but the current local models we'll have forever.

Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end

#77

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 » Tue, Jun 24, 2025, 12:46 AM UTC

roxolotl wrote: post #42

some_random wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is the lifestyle being subsidized that of those researchers Zuck hired for $100M? That's a meaningfully different usage of the phrase than the original "millennial lifestyle subsidy" to the point where the comparison isn't useful. Or again, is it just the fact AI products are being offered below cost?

The case for pessimism looks something like: - Generative AI, at a below market cost, eats the internet and becomes the primary entry point - Some combination of price hikes and service degradation, ads etc, make generative ai kinda shitty - We’re stuck with kinda shitty generative ai products because the old internet is gone This is the standard enshitification loop really

Don't forget about 'sponsored content' and ads appearing in the shitty AI results.

Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end

#78

Post by ChrisMarshallNY » Tue, Jun 24, 2025, 1:39 AM UTC

I’m old enough to remember when ATM machines were free; across all banks.

Back then, though, we knew it was the Heroin Dealer “First One is Free” Faustian bargain. No one was surprised, when the fees started up. It was only a matter of time.

> Junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy.

-William S. Burroughs

Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end

#79

Post by c0nducktr » Tue, Jun 24, 2025, 2:56 AM UTC

mansilladev wrote: post #49

haolez wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you do it? Do you host on your hardware or do you use cloud-based providers for open models?

If you have Docker (Desktop) installed, with just a couple of clicks, you can get a local model going on your computer. llama3.2 (3B), llama3.3 (70B), deepseek-r1, and about a dozen others.

Do you know if there's a site which will help me pick a model to run locally, based on my system specs and needs?

This has been the hardest thing for me to learn and since everything's evolving so quick, what's recommended one week might not be the next.

Re: The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end

#80

Post by jasonjmcghee » Tue, Jun 24, 2025, 5:48 AM UTC

throwanem wrote: post #45

jasonjmcghee wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the models I do use remain static and predictable Some people overload "local" a bit to mean you are hosting the model - whether it's on your computer, on your rack, or on your hetzner instance etc. But I think parent is referring to the open/static aspect of the models. If it's hosted by a generic model provider that is serving many users in parallel to reduce the end cost to the user, it's also theoretically a st…

I am bewildered to hear the sense of "local," in which I and engineers in my experience have for thirty years referred to things which are not remotely hosted, referred to as an "overload."

I thought it was friendlier than "abuse"